Seeing Eric
by ICanStopAnytime
Summary: "Your father had his own set of problems." - Tami Taylor to Julie Taylor in Season 3
1. Red Light

**Chapter One**

Eric Taylor was a weird kid. There was just no other way of putting it.

Coach Hamilton had told Mo McArnold to take the new second string quarterback under his wing and get him to "mesh" with the team. Coach wanted to train Eric up to replace Mo as QB1 after he graduated this year. Eric was only a junior, and he'd just moved into Dillon from Odessa this past summer, just in time for training. Coach said he had a "sixth sense" about Eric. Coach was always having "sixth senses."

Eric could play, yeah, Mo admitted that, but there was something that just wasn't normal about him. He didn't play with his heart, but with his head. You could almost see the gears turning in his brain before every play. When Coach was giving his speeches in the locker room, and everyone's eyes were bright and on fire and focused on what the man was saying, and they were all nodding, Eric would be looking at the chalkboards, his weirdly multi-colored eyes darting back and forth, memorizing every line.

Even at lunch, in the cafeteria, Eric didn't sit with the other football players. He took up a spot at the far corner of the geeks' table, but he wasn't really sitting with them either. He was just kind of by himself, with a bunch of thin, white cafeteria napkins spread out all over the brown surface of the table. He drew play diagrams on them with a ball point pen. One time Mo stopped by Eric's table, his girl Tami draped on his shoulders, and smirked. Tami was the one to say something, though. "Why don't you just use paper?"

Eric had looked up, blinked, and half smiled –Tami was hot, so Mo was used to that reaction. Tami had just laughed and walked away, and Mo had followed.

The napkin play diagrams were not the end of Eric Taylor's weirdness. Mo had taken Coach's command seriously, had tried to take Eric Taylor under his wing, but the guy wouldn't come along for a damn thing. Mo had invited Eric to a party after their first game, and Eric had said, "I've got chores and then homework and then I have to get up early for church tomorrow."

"Church?" Mo had asked. "You know tomorrow's Saturday, right?"

"Early mass."

That was another weird thing about Eric Taylor. The kid was Catholic, but he wasn't Hispanic. White Catholics were a rarity in Dillon.

"Then I gotta work at my dad's dealership," Eric had continued.

Mr. Taylor had moved in to town to take a job as manager of the local car dealership. Eric was put to work washing and waxing and vacuuming the cars and performing other menial tasks.

That was the last time Mo had tried to include Eric in something. Tonight though, after the game, as the sun was setting and they were all leaving the locker room and Coach had disappeared to his pickup, Mo tried again. "Me and some of the guys are going to the Landing Strip. Erickson's dad is the bouncer so he'll let us in. Just don't tell my girlfriend, or she'll get pissed. Want to come?"

"No thanks."

Mo dropped his duffle bag on the gravel parking lot – it would be asphalt by the time Eric Taylor returned to Dillon High as an assistant coach – and spread his hands wide. "No thanks? What the fuck Taylor? No thanks?"

Some other players lingered around them in a half circle, chuckling.

"I'd just rather go home and read a book," Eric said. "Got a new sports biography."

Mo's hands dropped. He'd had enough of this weird shit. "Are you a fag or something Taylor?"

"Does it make a guy gay if he doesn't feel the need to pay a girl to pretend to like him?"

Chuckles mixed with "oooohs" went up around Mo. He didn't like it. He was used to setting off laughter. He was used to telling the guys who to mock and when.

"There are plenty of girls who like me for free," Mo insisted. "I've got the hottest girl in the whole damn school, and she gives the best head."

"Well I guess," Eric said. "She's sure had a lot of practice."

"Red light!" Mo screamed. Eric just blinked, because he'd only been in Dillon two months, and he hadn't learned what this exclamation meant yet. What it meant was the Mo was about to pound him. And the only way Mo would stop pounding him was if Eric himself plead, "Red light!" This was Mo's personal version of "uncle." He prided himself in mixing up the old schoolyard game a bit. After all, he wasn't in 6th grade anymore. "Green light!" He shouted, and Eric looked even more puzzled. Then Mo punched him hard in a gut.

Eric grabbed at his stomach and doubled over.

"Take it back," Mo insisted. He punched him again, just as he was starting to stand up. "Say red light and then say you're sorry."

Mo was sure Eric would say the required words. Mo was the undisputed leader of the Panthers and had been for two years. The guys did what he said. And, really, Eric didn't seem like the fighting type. How could he be? A guy who stayed home to read books, who went to church on Saturday morning, who had to go home to do "chores"?

But Eric Taylor didn't take it back. He stood up straight and looked right into Mo's eyes, almost as if he had a death wish, almost as if he was hungry for hurt. Slowly and deliberately, Eric said, "Tami Hayes is a slut."

The fight was messy. It went to the ground quickly and there was a lot of grappling and not very many actual hits. The assistant principal, who had lingered after the game for some reason, broke it up and said he'd be speaking to Coach Hamilton about his players' "lack of self-discipline." He'd also be calling their fathers.

Mo watched Eric jerk his duffle bag up from the ground, wipe a trickle of blood from below his nose with the back of his hand, and turn toward his car.

**[FNL]**

Eric Taylor wiped the blood from his hand against his jeans and shifted his duffle bag as he started to walk toward the beat-up pick-up he'd bought with the money he'd earned last year working after school and half the summer in Odessa. He didn't know why he'd said those things about Tami Hayes. He didn't have anything against the girl, really. She _was_ a slut, but what more could you expect from a girl whose father was the town drunk? From what Eric heard, before going steady with Mo, Tami had been handing out blowjobs like candy. That was the locker room talk, anyway, when Mo was in Coach's office.

Eric had wanted to piss off Mo, but he didn't even know why he'd wanted to. Mo was all right. He was cocky as hell, but he was all right. He'd never done anything to Eric except invite him places. And accuse him of being gay, but that wasn't really what set him off. Eric didn't know _what_ had set him off.

As Eric stepped toward his pickup, leaving Mo behind in a huddle with the guys, he saw her. Tami Hayes. Just standing there in her tight blue jean skirt and her low cut blouse beneath her open jean jacket, her brown cowgirl boots stretching up almost to her knees. Mo was right. She _was_ the hottest girl in the school. Her hand was on the hood of his truck. He couldn't get in it without stepping up right beside her. He wondered where she'd been this whole time, if she'd heard anything he'd said. He swallowed. Eric covered the last few steps between them in a brisk stride, his eyes focused on the driver's side window.

He gripped the silver door handle without looking at her and started to pull the door open. Tami slammed the door shut. Instinctively, before he could stop himself, he turned to face her, and she slapped him hard across the face.


	2. No Apology

**Chapter Two**

Eric kept his head turned to the side for a moment, the warmth of Tami's palm still lingering on his flesh, the red creeping in, the sting tingling in his cheek like electricity. It almost felt good.

When he finally turned his face back to hers, he said, "I don't like being slapped."

"I don't like being called a slut. No one calls _John_ a slut."

John was a linebacker who'd fooled around with more than his fair share of rally girls.

"Apologize," she insisted.

Eric ran his tongue inside his cheek. It wasn't the first time he'd been slapped across his face. His mother used to slap him occasionally, when he was fourteen. Fourteen was the mouthy year. He'd say disrespectful things right to her face, say them until she couldn't take it anymore, and she'd just slam that palm straight across his cheek. One day, when her hand started to come down, he grabbed her wrist and shoved her away. He hadn't meant to shove as hard as he did. She'd hit the kitchen wall. Not hard, but hard enough that he could hear it.

That same moment, his father had come through the kitchen door. The man slammed that door so loud the whole house rattled.

Eric's father wasn't violent. He was usually calm. When he talked, it was always in a low, deep, slow voice of quiet command. But sometimes Eric thought he could see a tremor of rage somewhere just below the surface, choked down, chained, kept under a respectable lock and key.

That evening, the chain had come undone. Eric's dad had thundered across the horrid, red-brown kitchen floor tile and grabbed Eric by the shirt collar. The material balled in the man's fist, and Eric could feel the shirt tightening. Eric was bigger than his mom, but he wasn't bigger than his dad. He never would be. He saw the cold fire in his father's eyes, and then his feet were off the ground. He couldn't remember everything that happened next. He knows he was slammed against one wall, and then a second, and then suddenly they were in the living room and he was awkwardly on his ass, on the yellow-orange shag carpet, and his father was looming over him. "If you ever raise a hand against my wife again, I will throw you from this house. I don't care if you're only fourteen. I will throw you from this house." And then his dad was gone, back in the kitchen.

Eric's mom never slapped him again, but then again he never said another disrespectful word to her. He wasn't really sure why he'd done in the first place. Maybe he'd just wanted her to show him some emotion, any emotion, even if it was anger.

"Apologize," Tami repeated.

Eric didn't. He stared straight into her blue eyes. They were unnerving, those eyes. He almost blinked, they were so beautiful. But he didn't blink. He just stared.

She stared back.

Eric thought of the staring contests he'd had with his baby sister in the cramped back seat of the orange Vega whenever they went on family road trips. Debbie was a master of the staring contest. It was one of her many talents. Even though she was three years younger, she beat Eric at every competition, from Monopoly to Battleship to Stratego. She could solve a Rubiks cube in 120 second flat, no matter how much he twisted it up beforehand. She beat him at everything – except football, of course.

Debbie was the most unathletic kid he'd ever seen. She literally tripped over herself when she tried to catch a ball. But damn was she smart. That last year, when she was eleven, she used to leave half written novels scrawled on wide-ruled paper scattered around the house. He'd read a few, when she wasn't looking. They were as good as any boring book they'd ever made him read in school, except they were never finished. He'd always thought of telling her she should finish one, that he wanted to know what happened, but he never had. He'd never told her how good they were. He'd never told her a hundred different things he should have. He hadn't even told her goodbye.

He'd just silently watched his father and his uncle hoist that tiny coffin on their shoulders. Debbie was the runt of the family. She hadn't hit her growth spurt yet. At the age of eleven, she was still less than four feet tall. It only took two men to carry the box. Eric had stood there with his eyes wide open, not blinking, as they lowered her coffin into the yawning ground, into that small, neat rectangle of nothingness. The drifting dust stung his eyes but he still didn't blink. The hurt felt good.

"You blinked, asshole." Tami's voice was deafening, like a loud echo down a dark tunnel.

Eric's body started to tremble. He couldn't control it. He couldn't get a hold of himself, the shaking. He grabbed onto the door handle for support. He could feel the guttural cry mounting, somewhere down from inside his chest, rising up to his throat, threatening to come out of his mouth. _Swallow it. Swallow it. Swallow it, _ he chanted to himself. _Goddamnit, swallow it!_ _Not here. Not now._

"Are you all right?" Tami's voice was quieter now, like someone calling from a distant shore, the sound half lost in the waves. "Eric?"

That was when he felt the hot wetness on his cheeks. Streams of tears. Rivers.

He jerked open the truck door and clambered inside. He didn't even notice that he'd left his gym bag on the gravel outside. He fished in jeans pocket for his keys and shoved one in the ignition. When it slid in, he cranked the key. The truck roared to life and then leveled into its familiar sputter. He threw it into drive, slammed the accelerator, and tore out of the parking lot. He dared to glance once in the rearview mirror. Tami Hayes stood there, watching him.

Not just watching him, but _seeing_ him.


	3. Fantasies

**Chapter Three**

Tami knew where Mo and the guys were going to go later tonight, though she pretended not to know as he drove her home from the school parking lot, Eric's gym bag between her feet.

It pissed her off, the idea of Mo getting a lap dance from some stripper. It pissed her off that strip clubs existed at all, that weak women made their livings from exploiting the weaknesses of men. She hated the way the world was, people using each other, never really seeing each other. But the world _was_ that way. Damn well better get used to it.

And let's be honest. She'd learned to use guys herself. A little sexual favor here and there went a long way. She'd never had _sex sex_ until she'd started dating Mo last summer, but she knew how to make the boys give her the attention and approval she wanted, to buy her beer, to lie to her mom for her, to give her rides wherever she needed to go. It didn't take much. That was just the way the world worked, wasn't it? A pathetic exchange of need for need. Like when Dad needed money, he'd come home. And when Mom needed to play the good Christian martyr of a wife, she'd let him.

So why not let Mo go to the strip club without complaint? It wasn't as if Mo was cheating on her…even if it _felt_ like he was. Every Dillon High football player went sooner or later. It was odd that Eric had declined. She could see why Mo had asked if he was a fag. Besides, hadn't Eric cried like a baby when she'd slapped him?

Except…Tami knew he hadn't cried because she slapped him. She knew that. She knew his tears had nothing to do with her hand marking his face in a red print. She had no idea what those tears were about, though. They had startled all of the hate out of her. Those silent tears had silenced the anger that had been churning in her up until that moment.

She was still thinking about Eric's odd display of emotion when Mo let her off in front of her house and peeled off in his Mustang to "pay a woman to pretend to like him." That's how Eric had put it, hadn't he? What a weird thing for a guy to say.

Eric had only been in Dillon three months. It was hard to fit into this town if you hadn't grown up here. You'd think he would be trying harder, but it was almost as if he didn't care what anyone thought of him. Tami had met some tough guys in her life, and yet…she'd never met anyone who didn't care what the other guys thought of him. It fascinated her.

Before going inside, Tami buttoned her jean jacket all the way up to conceal her revealing blouse. She pulled her jean skirt down as far as she could. Then she picked up Eric's gym bag from the overgrown lawn. Mo had offered to bring it back to him, "Next time I beat the shit out of him," but Tami had said she would. She told Mo it was because she wanted to have another chance to slap him, but the truth was…she was curious. What was with those tears? She hadn't mentioned them to Mo yet. The other guys hadn't seen. Eric _had_ cared about that at least – had cared that no one see him cry.

Now Tami stepped up the three stairs to the stoop and walked through the screen door into the living room, where her eleven-year-old sister Shelley lay on her stomach watching _Family Ties_. Their mom sat in a worn arm chair reading her Bible.

Mom looked up and said, "That skirt's too short." She put her Bible down, came over, and opened a drawer in the end table. She pulled out a wooden ruler and held it up to Tami's leg. "Two inches above the knee! Two inches! You don't want to turn out like your father, do you?"

Tami sighed, rolled her eyes, and flopped down on the couch. No, she didn't want to end up like her father. She didn't want to end up like her mother either. Lately, though, she'd been fearing she would. One or the other. "If you don't want me to end up like Dad," Tami shot back, "why did you let him sleep here last night?"

"The good Lord teaches us to be kind to the sinner, to bear our crosses with grace." Her mom sat down and picked up her Bible again.

Tami's mom had first kicked out their dad when Tami was eleven. Mom wouldn't divorce Dad, but she'd kick him out. Every now and then he'd come back, asking for forgiveness, asking for money, tussling Tami's hair, tickling Shelley, pretending to give a shit. Mom would never let him stay more than a night or two, but she'd let him stay. He'd never leave empty handed either. Mom had a little family money and what she earned now as a church secretary. It wasn't much, but it was enough to pay the mortgage on this three-bedroom house, to maintain one family car Mom never let Tami drive, and to grease Dad's palm now and again.

From the floor, Shelley sighed. "Alex P. Keaton is so cute."

"You like them short, do you?" Tami asked.

"You shouldn't be thinking about boys at all," their mom insisted. "And who was that boy who dropped you off just now, Tami?"

"Mo," Tami said. "He's a good Christian boy. Goes to First Baptist." The Hayes went to Second Baptist. It wasn't that Mrs. Hayes had anything against First Baptist. It was just a matter of geography. They were on opposite ends of town.

Mom had no idea Tami had a steady boyfriend. It wasn't something Tami had ever mentioned to her. "You haven't done anything with him that you shouldn't have, have you?"

"No, mom."

Shelley did a half push up from the floor and looked back over her shoulder at Tami. "Don't you think he's cute? I am so in love with Michael J. Fox."

"You're not in love with Michael J. Fox," Tami said. "You're in love with a fictional character. You're in love with a fantasy."

"Who are _you_ in love with?" Shelley asked.

_Mo_, Tami told herself. _Mo. I'm in love with Mo._

But maybe that was a fantasy too.


	4. Kids Can't Choose Their Parents

**Chapter Four**

"What do you need that for?" Shelley asked, gesturing to the gym bag that Tami was trying to situate on her shoulders in such a way that she could still ride her ten-speed.

Tami really needed better transportation of her own. Even her father, who only worked odd jobs here and there, had managed to buy a pick-up a couple months ago. Mo had a new Mustang. Eric had a truck, and he was only a junior.

"I'm returning it to this jerk who left it in the parking lot yesterday."

Shelley raised her two red and white pom-poms – Marcus Middle School colors – in the air and said, "Yaaaay, jerk!"

"You really need to work on your cheers."

Shelley wasn't quite in middle-school yet, but she was determined that the second she walked through those Marcus Middle School doors next year, she was going to be on the cheer squad. Tami didn't mind watching football, but she'd never been slightly interested in cheerleading. Her extracurricular activities consisted of waitressing twenty hours a week at the diner and hanging out with football players.

As Tami straddled her bike she asked, "What are you doing up this early anyway?"

"I'm usually up this early."

True enough. Ever since she was about four, Shelley seemed to get by on five or six hours of sleep a night. The girl was a ball of energy. Once, when Shelley was in second grade, the principal called home because Shelley just stood up in the middle of class and started running laps around the desks and wouldn't stop for twenty minutes. She'd been taken to a doctor and he'd given her some kind of pill, but it made her zombie-like, and Mom eventually took her off it.

Tami shook her head and started riding. She'd gotten Eric's address from the White Pages and mapped out her journey at home, using a Dillon Town map. Phonebooks and maps…old-school tools her own futures daughters would never use. Tami couldn't imagine all the changes that awaited her.

On the three-mile ride to the Taylor house, Tami thought about what she was going to say. She thought about ridiculing Eric for his tears, but something checked that instinct – namely that she didn't know their cause, and that cause seemed heavy. Maybe she would insist she wasn't a slut, but she didn't need _his_ respect anyway, and not every one of the rumours was precisely untrue. What bothered her most was the double standard. Johnny McMann could sleep with half the rally girls, and he was just a stud. She fooled around with a few guys her junior year, didn't even go all the way with any of them, and she was a slut. Maybe she'd tell Eric he was a hypocrite.

Then again, for all she knew, Eric Taylor only had _one_ standard. He'd shrugged off the notion of going to the strip club with the guys as though it was beneath him. She couldn't say that hadn't fascinated her just a little bit. Eric was such an odd character. He was new. That was enough to make him odd right there, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. He was taking advanced history and math classes, but he was also a decent football player. He didn't quite run with any crowd, and he didn't have a girlfriend. He'd intentionally picked a fight with one of the most popular guys in school, and then burst into tears when a girl slapped him across the face.

Not much ever happened in Dillon, Texas. But this was almost like the mystery novels she'd devoured in elementary school, back when she still had some sense of who she was and where she was going. The Mystery of the New QB2: Who was Eric Taylor? And what was he hiding?

**[FNL]**

Mr. Taylor took hold of Eric's tie. For a minute, Eric had a flashback to that day almost two years ago when his father had slammed him against two walls for shoving his mother. That was the first and last and only time his father had ever been violent with him, but the moment haunted him. Now, though, his dad only straightened his tie until it was near perfect. "You look good, son," he said.

"Thanks."

Eric felt stiff in his suit, even though he should be used to it by now. It was the same one he wore for mass three mornings a week. He didn't go seven days a week like his father. They'd compromised on his commitment - Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday morning. After all, it was a long drive to church. There was only one Catholic church in Dillon in those days, and it had a Spanish-speaking congregation, so Eric's dad drove them to the next town over.

Mr. Taylor now grabbed his keys off the yellow, cheap kitchen countertop and headed for the door. As he followed his father, Eric glanced back at his mother. She was standing in front of the kitchen sink in her faded pink terry cloth bathrobe holding a mug of coffee. She stared out the window, maybe at the leaves that had started turning brown and red and faintly falling to a pile of decay below.

The mug said, "World's Best Mom." They had given it to her when Debbie was three and Eric was six, or, rather, Dad had bought it for them to give to her. That was the year she'd decided to quit her nursing job to be a stay-at-home mom, and she'd been a great one too: warm cookies and cool milk waiting for Eric on the table when he walked home from first grade; hugs and kisses and lots of questions about his day.

Mom used to straighten Eric's tie for mass, not Dad. But Mom hadn't gone to mass in two years. Mom didn't believe in God anymore. Eric wasn't sure he did either, but his father insisted he go. So he went. It was an easy enough way to please his father, and, for the past two years, his father had been difficult to please.

It hadn't always been that way. Eric's childhood memories were full of scenes of being carried on his father's shoulders at games, playfully roughhousing with Dad on the living room floor while mom shook her head, Dad coming home early from work to surprise him with a new football, Dad cross-legged before Debbie's little tea table, the big man raising dainty cups of china to his lips and sipping lightly, Dad even letting Debbie put a tiara on his thick mane of black hair.

Eric's father hadn't dropped all interest in him, but that interest had morphed into strict concern about his grades, his football performance, and his college prospects. And why not? Eric was an only child now. The weight of the Taylor reputation rested on his shoulders alone.

Eric turned away from his mother's limply staring figure and stepped out the door.

At least Dad hadn't checked out like Mom. He was there. Not quite in the way Eric needed him to be, but at least he was there. As he would tell Matt Saracen many years later, Eric didn't know what he would have done if his own father hadn't been around, if he had been off some place like Iraq…

Eric looked down at the cracked cement of the Taylor driveway as they approached his father's Buick. On the driveway before him, he saw the silver toe of a boot and drew his eyes up a pair of long legs. He followed those legs up over a well-developed chest draped by a few thick strands of strawberry blonde hair to a pair of arresting blue eyes. Draped over Tami's shoulder was the strap of his gym bag. "You left this," she said. She slid it off her shoulder and stretched it out. He looked at her warily as he took the bag from her hand.

Eric waited for her to make a joke about his tears, to call him a fag or a baby, to say something about what she'd witnessed. But she didn't. Maybe it was because his dad was standing right there. She'd probably told Mo by now. She'd probably told the whole team. Monday at school and practice was going to be a nightmare.

"Son, are you going to introduce me to your friend?"

Eric blinked. "Uh…Dad, this is Tami Hayes. She's a senior." At least she'd be gone next year, Eric thought, along with Mo, and maybe his senior year would be less miserable than his junior one had been so far. Well, he didn't suppose Tami would be gone exactly. She wasn't likely going away to college. Mo had a scholarship offer already, but Tami, if rumors were true, barely got promoted last year and hadn't bothered to take her SAT's. She'd be around; she just wouldn't be around Dillon High. From what Eric had heard, she'd be lucky if she managed to graduate instead of dropping out. "She goes to my high school."

"You mean the only high school?" Tami asked.

Eric's dad nodded in Tami's direction. "Thanks for returning his gym bag." Then he glanced at Eric. "You should really be less forgetful, son. Now we're going to be late for mass." He went around the Buick and unlocked it.

"Ah. Explains the suit," Tami said, looking Eric over.

"Yeah," Eric muttered. Was she trying to have a conversation with him? After slapping him across the face?

Eric glanced behind Tami and saw the ten-speed bike she'd leaned against the mailbox. Mo had mentioned she didn't have a car. Eric supposed that was how she stayed in such good shape even though she didn't play any sport.

"So…uh…why are you up so early on a Saturday?" he asked. What he really wanted to ask was – had she told anyone about his tears?

"I have to be to work at 8:00. "

Eric opened the car door and shoved the gym bag in the back seat. As they drove off, in the rearview mirror, he watched Tami mount her Schwinn.

When they were on the main road, Mr. Taylor said, "Tami Hayes. Is she related to Frank Hayes?"

"Yeah. He's her dad."

"Unfortunate."

Eric watched the flat road ahead of them. He felt oddly defensive of Tami. The irony was not lost on him, given his own words yesterday, but for some reason, he _did_ feel defensive. "Kids can't choose their parents."

"No," his father murmured. "I suppose if they could, they'd choose better ones. Wouldn't you?"

Eric's mouth opened and then closed. He didn't say anything.


	5. Confession

**Chapter Five**

"Saw your dad hanging around here last night," Donna said when Tami put her purse under the counter. "Guess he thought you'd be working." Donna was well into her forties, and waitressing at this diner was the only job she'd ever had. Tami looked at her some days – the wrinkles around her eyes, the weary way she sighed when she sat down - and wondered if that would be her in thirty years.

Tami tied around her waist a white apron – the only uniform of the diner. "I never work on game nights."

"He don't know that though. Don't guess he knows much about you."

"Don't guess." Tami walked around Donna to punch her time sheet.

"It's weird, your mama being so nice and all, and him being…well…him."

Tami didn't think of her mother as nice, but she supposed she was to most people. Mrs. Hayes was well liked, anyway. She always had a smile for anyone, and you could rely on her for charity. She led a women's Bible Study and organized the food pantry at Second Baptist. She was kind to people that most others ignored. Tami guessed Mom reserved her judgment for her daughters. Her daughters had to prove they were better than their father, who gambled and caroused and drank.

That's why Tami always had to lie about not having a boyfriend, change her clothes when she left the house, and change them back when she got home. Mrs. Hayes was less strict about grades, perhaps because she'd never graduated high school herself. She was content if Tami brought home C's, though she'd scold for a D. Tami's father had actually gone to college for a semester, and not even to play football. But then he'd quit to work and support his family. Tami sometimes wondered what his life would have been like – what their family life would have been like – if he had stuck with school. Maybe he'd have become one of those middle-class, functional alcoholics who drew his whisky out of a cherry oak cabinet at work, instead of just the town drunk who carried his booze in a brown bag.

"Why'd she ever marry that man anyhow?" Donna asked as Tami picked up her pad and pencil.

"Who knows." Tami had done the math when she was in fourth grade, when she first heard about the birds and the bees. She'd figured out the marriage probably had something to do with the pregnancy. Her mother, apparently, had not always been interested in purity. "Nice chatting with you, Donna, but I've got to open up now."

**[FNL]**

Church was boring, as usual. Boring but familiar, oddly comforting in its ritual, which Eric could follow without thinking. The liturgy pleasantly numbed him, as long as it lasted.

He went to confession afterward. He always felt like a child who had broken his mother's favorite vase every time he sat down in the booth. They kept it just a little dark; not so dark that you couldn't see the faint outline of the priest – not so dark that you could be _truly_ private - but dark enough so you could know you weren't worthy of the light – that you weren't good enough, and you weren't ever going to be.

He crossed himself and said, "Bless me, father, for I have sinned. It has been a week since my last confession. I have…uh….abused myself…" He always got that one out of the way right away and immediately moved on. "I have disrespected my parents. I got in a fight after school. I have been unkind to a girl. I have – "

"- How were you unkind, my son?"

"Uh…I….uh…said some things about her."

"Those things being….?"

"Just that…she was really practiced at giving...uh...and that she was…uh…a slut. And she overheard me."

"Have you apologized to her?"

"No, father," Eric admitted.

"Why not?"

"Just…uh...haven't. It just happened yesterday."

"Did you know that the Bible puts slander in the same category as thievery and murder?"

"Uh….no, father." That hardly seemed fair. Eric hadn't stolen anything. He hadn't killed anyone.

"Slander steals a person's reputation. It murders his good name, his very identity."

Eric swallowed.

"You will need to apologize to this girl and refrain from any further slander."

"Does it….does it matter if it's true? I mean, it's not slander then, is it?"

"My son, at the very least it is gossip, and it is unkind, as you yourself clearly understand. You do not lift people up by pointing out their vices, but by pointing out their virtues."

Like the best coaches he'd had, Eric thought.

"Continue."

"I have used foul language. I have…I think that's all this week." He waited as the priest assigned his penance and gave the absolution. When he emerged from the booth, Eric blinked his eyes against the sudden light.

**[FNL]**

Mr. Taylor suggested breakfast on the way home. There weren't a lot of places to eat in Dillon in those days. There was the Alamo Freeze that would stand another sixty years before being declared a historic landmark, the one diner, three bars with very little food, and a single sit-down restaurant called Rob's Steakhouse, which would later be home to the Applebee's.

They settled on the diner. As he slid into the dark brown booth across from his father, Eric glanced around and spied Tami pouring two cups of coffee behind the counter. He should have known this was where she worked if she had an early morning job. He sent up a silent prayer that she wouldn't be their waitress and bent his head down over the menu.

"What can I get you?" Tami's voice all right. Eric continued to study the menu.

"Steak and eggs," his dad said. "And coffee? Son?"

"Steak and eggs. Coffee," Eric muttered like an echo. When she was gone, he finally raised his head.

Mr. Taylor's lips twitched. Eric hadn't seen his dad smile often in the past two years, but he was smiling now. "You afraid of that girl, son?"

"No, sir," he said.

Mr. Taylor chuckled.

"I'm not."

Still, Eric was relieved when Tami told them she was taking her break and another waitress would be taking over their table.


	6. A Man Honors His Vows

**Chapter Six**

Tami went out back to smoke in the alley during her break. She only _needed_ two or three puffs. She wasn't really addicted, was she, if she never smoked more than two or three puffs at a time? She never bought cigarettes either. She'd always wheedled them out of the hand of some willing boy. Johnny McMann had given her this entire pack.

"Bum a cigarette?"

Tami didn't have to look up. She recognized the voice instantly, but she looked up anyway. "You look like shit."

"Don't talk to your father like that."

She extended him the pack. His fingers were shaking when he drew out a cigarette. "Talk to me like that again, and I'll have to tell your mom I caught you smoking. And you know she'll ground you for a month. She always was the strict parent."

"At least she gives a shit."

Tami's dad leaned in for the lighter and then drew back. He took a deep drag. She saw that his hand was still shaking. Kicking him out was the best thing Mom had ever done. Tami didn't understand why she didn't just divorce him and demand alimony. Not that Dad would pay it. He'd probably still keep coming back once a month, crashing on the couch for a night, and leaving with twenty of mom's hard-earned dollars the next morning.

Tami's mother was not a weak woman. She supported two girls by herself. But she had this hang up about being a "good Christian." She was almost obsessed with the Bible these days. She hadn't always been, but when Dad had started drinking more heavily, mom had started praying more heavily. Tami sometimes thought religion was a drug for her mother, the way liquor was for her dad.

"Gotta few bucks you can lend your old man?"

"No." She threw her lit cigarette on the asphalt. She tried not to stare at her father: his uneven, three-day stubble, his lightly shaking form, the fading black half circle around his right eye.

"You and me," he said, "we understand each other. We don't need to conform , you know. You're not a conformist, Tami. That's what I've always loved about my big girl. You don't need to be like all those mindless people out there, you get me? With all that studying for tests and saying 'yes, sir,' and 'yes, ma'am' and suckin' up to the boss. Now you gotta few bucks?"

"I said no." She walked fast down the alley back toward the door of the diner. For the last two feet she broke into a run.

"What are you running for?" he called after her. "You're just running away. You're not running _to_ a damn thing."

Her father was always saying incoherent things like that. But as the door slammed shut behind her, she thought there was a haunting truth in his words. What _was_ she running toward?

**[FNL]**

When Eric and his father got back home from the diner, Mom was again standing in front of the sink. She'd no doubt moved since they left and then returned to that same spot, because now she had glass of pinkish wine in her hand instead of a mug of coffee. She still had the bathrobe on.

At least Mom never left the house unless she was sober. It wasn't as if Mom was the town drunk. None of them could be the town anything, seeing as they were all so new to the town. Dad had moved them from Odessa suddenly, with only two weeks' warning. "I got a new job," he had announced one day over a quietly awkward dinner during which no one mentioned that Mom had burned the chicken again. "It's in Dillon."

Mom asked, "Where's Dillon?"

"Not far from here. Two hours maybe."

"So we have to move?" Mom had sounded slightly alarmed.

"A change of scenery might do you good, Betty. It might do us all some good. And Dillon High had a good team last year. They almost made it to State. Eric might have a chance to prove himself. He's just warming the bench here."

Now his father took the glass from his mother's hand and dumped it down the drain. "I'm tired of finding you like this," he said. "You need to see someone." When she didn't answer, Eric's dad continued, "You need to take something."

She just stared out the window. Mr. Taylor sighed and left the kitchen.

Eric leaned against the counter. "It _is_ early, Mom," he said.

She turned, looked at him, and blinked twice. "My God," she said. "You look just like your father did when we first started dating. When did you become a man?"

"I'm not a man," he wanted to say. "I'm still your little boy. I'm still a boy who needs his mom. Don't you see that? Don't you see me?"

He didn't say it, of course. He bit his bottom lip instead.

She turned back to the window, and he went to his room to change for work.

**[FNL]**

The loud whir of the vacuum came to a sudden stop. "Damnit," Eric muttered. He slid out from the car and checked the machine. It was always clicking off like this. He was fiddling with the buttons when he caught a whiff of stale breath and a slap of pungent alcohol. He looked up and into the face of Tami's father.

"Where's the asshole who sold me that piece of shit truck? Where's Buddy Garrity?"

"Uh….I…"

"Frank." The deep voice of Eric's father came down from a head above Mr. Hayes just as his hand came down on the man's shoulder. "Come with me."

Mr. Hayes shook his hand off. "You're running a scam of an operation here you know. These were good honest people before you came up here and started managing this place. You come up here from your fancy town – "

"Odessa?" Mr. Taylor asked.

"- With your business school ideas."

"Frank, Frank, Fraaaaank," Buddy Garrity called as he walked over. His hair was slicked back and was already starting to gray at the age of only twenty-six. Eric had watched him put on ten pounds in the last two months. Eric wondered if that would happen to him if he ever stopped playing football.

"How are you doing?" Buddy extended Mr. Hayes one hand. "Are you still having trouble with the vehicle? You know I'll put it right." As Buddy Garrity shook Mr. Hayes's hand he began to pull him toward one of the sales rooms.

Eric's father sighed and disappeared to his office. Through the window, Eric saw him pick up the phone even as Mr. Hayes's shouting grew louder in Buddy's office.

Later, when a police officer was ushering Mr. Hayes off, they all watched - Mr. Taylor and Buddy Garrity standing to the right and left of Eric. "Your friends with one of his daughters, right?" Eric's dad asked him.

"Friends? No. She doesn't like me much."

"Do you know…does he hit those girls?"

"I don't think so," Buddy Garrity said. "He doesn't live with them. They're separated, her mom and dad."

"Sometimes that's better for a kid." Mr. Taylor rested a hand on Eric's shoulder as he spoke. "Sometimes it's for the best that a couple go their separate ways."

"Not usually," Eric said. "It's not usually better."

His father just murmured and walked away.

Buddy looked at Eric, balled his hand into a fist, and pointed at his old state ring. "Nine years," he said. "It's been nine years now since I won this beauty. Nine years since the Panthers have won a state championship. You're going to help change that, Eric, aren't you? This is the year, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir."

Buddy laughed, his loud, wide-smiled guffaw. "Jesus, Eric. I'm not that much older than you. Don't ever call me sir."

"Yes, sir."

**[FNL] **

Eric's dad cooked dinner that night. It was getting more common for him to cook, even though he was the only working parent at the moment. Mom had a cold, so she'd gone to bed early, and Eric just sat pushing his food around his plate.

"Don't like my cooking, son?" his father asked from across the table. A glass of water sat by his plate. Dad never drank beer. Eric had never thought to ask why. It wasn't as if he came from some teetotaling religious tradition.

"It's good." Eric put his fork down and shifted his napkin in his lap. "Are you thinking of divorcing mom?" Might as well have it out. It would be easier for him if he knew.

"Why do you ask that?"

"What you said. About it being better for some couples to divorce." Eric peered up from his plate at his dad, who had his elbows on the table and his fingers laced together. Until his father had said those words, it hadn't occurred to him that his parents would ever not be together. It hadn't occurred to him how lonely his father must be, with a wife who rarely responded to him. Eric knew _he_ himself was lonely….but his father. His father was his father. He rarely thought about his father's feelings.

Mr. Taylor put his hand around his water glass. "I took a vow to your mother. Before God Almighty and a host of witnesses." He raised his glass and sipped. Then he put it back down. "A man honors his vows, Eric. I hope you know that."

"Yes, sir."


	7. Wise Counsel

**Author's Note: **I appreciate reader feedback, even if it's just to say one thing you liked or didn't like. Thanks for the comments and please keep them coming! I promise, to those of you who are anxious for Tami and Eric to start spending time together, that they will very soon have scenes together! I've just found it necessary to develop them as individuals and their family backgrounds before their worlds further collide.

**C****hapter Seven**

Mrs. Mason extended a pencil to Tami across her desk. The office door was closed behind them. The white pencil was dotted with blue and red balloons. "Happy birthday," the counselor said.

"Gee. Thanks. A pencil. Just what I always wanted." Tami's birthday wasn't for another month anyway. Clearly this was just one of Mrs. Mason many excuses to call her into the counselor's office. Mrs. Mason had been trying to have chats with Tami on and off ever since her sophomore year. Usually Tami ignored her, but sometimes the words annoyingly took root somewhere in her mind.

"Tami," Mrs. Mason said, "You know, you're not going to be able to get into _any_ college unless you excel this year and do really well on your SAT's ."

"I missed the SAT's."

"They'll be offered again in March."

"I told you already. I'm not going to college. People in my family don't finish college." Tami had a C average at the moment. She wasn't like Eric Taylor, who was already taking Trigonometry as a junior. As a senior, she was taking Algebra II a second time, and she'd have to pass it to graduate. Then again, she'd be eighteen soon. She could legally drop out if she wanted to. She tapped the pencil up and down on the wood. "Most people in my family don't even finish high school."

Mrs. Mason's hand shot out and slapped the pencil still on the desk. Startled, Tami looked up. The usually calm counselor had a suddenly sharp tone. "What makes you think you have to be like anyone in your family?"

Tami blinked.

"I saw your elementary and middle school grades. You did well in _all_ of your subjects. Even your freshman year you at least had a few B's. What happened?"

Why was this woman looking at her _elementary_ school grades? "Just dumb I guess." The truth was, Tami hadn't bothered to study for a test in three years. She always copied homework from a willing boy, and there was always a willing boy.

In elementary and middle school she'd enjoyed the attention of the teachers, the sense of self-worth that came from their praise. But at some point, she'd stop trying to please adults. Maybe it was when she finally understood her father was a drunk or that she could never be pure enough to please her mother.

Mrs. Mason's voice was soft. "You're trying to fail, darling."

"I'm not your darling."

"Your father's life?" Mrs. Mason leaned across the desk. "It doesn't have to be yours. Your mother's life? It doesn't have to be yours either. You have a 2.0 right now. There are some options still. TMU and MWU require a 2.5, but they'll go as low as 2.3 if you get at least 1200 on your SAT's. If you get a 3.4 this year, and do well on your SAT's, and write a decent essay, you'll be able to get in."

Tami shoved back her chair. "Thanks for the pencil."

She was out the door a second later, strutting down the hall, but the counselor's words were not out of her mind - not until she neared Mo in the hall and saw him leaning with his shoulder against a locker, laughing with one of the rally girls – Eric Taylor's rally girl, actually. Tami walked up and smacked him on the ass. "Hey, baby," she said, sliding an arm around his waist and slipping her fingers into his back pocket. Mary Ellen frowned. Mo stood up straight and put an arm around Tami.

"Hey yourself," he said. "See ya," he said to Mary Ellen, who pouted and sulked off.

Tami eyed Mary Ellen as she flounced down the hall. She didn't like that little buoyant swish in the girl's walk. She didn't like that this wasn't the first time she'd seen her chatting up Mo. "Coach talk to you about the fight yet?" she asked.

"Not yet," Mo said, taking her hand. "He told us to come in during our lunch period. But it was Taylor's fault, not mine." He kissed the top of her head. "Pretty sure I'm not the one getting benched."

**[FNL]**

Coach Hamilton drummed his fingers on the desk. Eric shifted in the chair across from him. Mo was more relaxed, as if he didn't really expect Coach Hamilton to come down hard, or as if he knew his father would get him out of any suspension.

All day long, neither Mo nor anyone on the team had said a word about Eric's crying fit. Tami Hayes had told no one. It was the only explanation. What Eric didn't understand was – why? Why hadn't she had a field day with the news?

"This is a team," Coach said. "You two have got to put this," he waved a hand back and forth between them, "whatever the hell this is, behind you."

Mo shrugged. "He called my girlfriend a slut."

Coach glared at Eric, and Eric looked straight down at the desk. "Mo," Coach said, "go clean the toilets."

"There's a janitor for that, there's – "

"- Do as you're told."

"Yes, sir."

Eric didn't look up, even when the door shut.

"I took you to be more of gentleman than that, young man. Now why would you call a young lady a slut?"

Eric peered up. It wasn't as if Coach didn't overhear some of the locker room talk.

Coach caught his eye and seemed to read his mind. "Sometimes young men say things that aren't precisely true in the locker room, Eric. And sometimes they say things that _are_ true. But either way, true or false, a gentleman doesn't go around calling a girl a slut. And he sure as hell doesn't call her that in front of her boyfriend. Not unless he wants to pick a fight. What the hell is wrong with you?"

Eric leaned back in his chair and looked away.

"Look at me," Coach Hamilton insisted.

Eric did, not quite meeting the man's eyes. "You're new on this team. You're new at this school. You aren't exactly ingratiating yourself. Have you made any friends at all since you moved here?"

"No, sir."

"Do you _want_ to be disliked? Are you aiming for that?"

_Maybe_, Eric thought. Maybe if you don't get too attached to anyone, you can't get too hurt. "No, sir," he muttered.

"Because you're succeeding. You're an acceptable player, young man, but I can't keep you on this team if you can't be a _team_ player. You understand?"

"I am a team player. I don't show off. I don't – "

"– That's not what I'm talking about, and you damn well know it. You have to be a team player _off_ the field. You get me, young man?"

"Yes, sir."

"You also have to get out of your head. It's like you're playing by the book. I know you've got a heart in there somewhere. Football isn't a mathematical equation, Eric. You can't draw a geometric pattern on a napkin and really expect - " Coach sighed. "Listen. You've got to let yourself _love_ the game. I mean really _love_ the game. I know you've got it in you somewhere. But something is keeping that love clamped down. Is there something else going on with you I need to know about?"

"No, sir." What was he supposed to say? My parents aren't my parents anymore and never will be again. My sister died two years ago, and I haven't gotten over it. Hell, no one in Dillon even knew he'd ever had a sister. It wasn't something Dad talked about at the car dealership or church. Mom hardly ever left the house. "No, sir," he repeated.

"I talked the assistant principal out of calling your fathers about this fight."

"Thank you." At least he wouldn't have to deal with that confrontation with his father.

"I told him I would handle this," Coach continued. "You and Mo are going to be doing a lot of running of the bleachers and a lot of cleaning up around this locker room. Especially _you_. When it comes to fights, young man – look at me when I tell you this." Eric looked up. "Finish, don't start. And you started that. You get me?"

"Yes, sir."

Coach Hamilton yanked open a desk drawer and pulled out a file. "Go home now. I want to see you on the field at 5:30 sharp tomorrow morning. And every Tuesday morning thereafter. We're going to run some plays. But we're going to run them from the heart. And tomorrow afternoon, you get the toilets."

Eric stood and walked out, his hands buried deep in his the pockets of his jeans.


	8. A Price for Silence

**Chapter Eight  
**

**[Monday]**

Tami took a drag from her cigarette as she leaned against Mo's Mustang and waited for him to come out of the locker room after practice. All day long, she'd been thinking about Mrs. Mason's words. She'd been thinking about how fun school used to be, when she was a young kid, before her dad had completely lost himself to the liquor, before Dillon had seemed like such a dead end. She thought about the sheer, childlike joy she'd felt in solving problems, getting the right answer, learning something new.

All day long, Tami had wondered if there was any way to recapture that happy feeling, even just a little bit. If there was any way out of her dead end job at the diner. If maybe, just maybe, she could spend the rest of her senior year pulling up her grades and getting into some kind of college. But who was she kidding? She was so far behind. She didn't even know where to start when it came to studying for the SAT's.

So she'd slunk back to Mrs. Mason's office at the end of the school day. She'd made sure no one was lingering outside and she'd shut that door all the way. And then she'd admitted what she'd been thinking.

"You're a capable girl, Tami, but you are behind. The best thing you can do right now is get a tutor." Mrs. Mason had slid a list of tutors across the desk to her. "I'd suggest one of these."

Tami glanced down at the list and ran her eyes over the hourly rates. She stood up.

"Where are you going?"

"I can't afford that!"

"Tami, there are ways to – "

"– Screw that!" Tami threw the exclamation back as she stormed out the door.

Now she waited for Mo. Maybe Mo would give her the money for the tutor. But Eric Taylor emerged from the locker room before Mo did.

She dropped her cigarette and squished it under the heel of her boot. She didn't really like smoking. It was something she did for show. A puff here, a puff there, and then she'd grind it out.

She watched Eric walking, head bent to the gravel, gym bag slung over his shoulder. She thought he hadn't seen her at all, but his feet slowed to a stop just as he passed her.

He looked up from his feet to her. She'd never really been face to face with him like this before, except Friday night, when she'd slapped him. She'd been too angry then to study his eyes. They were an unusual hazel color. If she were handing out senior superlatives, his would be prettiest eyes. Or biggest asshole. Or biggest crier. Or hardest to figure out. Something like that.

"Thank you," he said, "for not mentioning it."

"Mentioning what?" she asked, even though she knew what he meant.

"You know…what you…saw. For not telling the guys. I don't know why you didn't. After what I said, I figured you'd be happy to make my life a living hell."

She hooked her thumbs through her belt loops and studied him. "What makes you think I'm a slut anyway?"

He looked away. "I'm sorry I said that. I don't even know you."

"Damn right you don't."

"It wasn't personal."

"It was personal for Mo," she said. "Why do you want to piss him off so much? He was just trying to include you."

Now he met her eyes again. "You know what he was trying to include me in?"

"Of course I do," she said, more nonchalantly than she felt.

"And that doesn't bother you?"

"It's not like he cheats on me."

Eric shifted his gym bag to his other shoulder. "Okay then. So….you're not going to mention it to anyone, right?"

"You wailing like a baby when I slapped you? Maybe not."

Fear crept into his eyes. So Eric Taylor _did_ care what others thought about him. Maybe not a lot, but enough.

"Maybe you can do something for me in exchange for my silence."

"What could I possibly do for you?" he asked. "I don't do anything illegal."

"Jesus. You think really highly of me don't you? I was just going to ask you to tutor me for free. In my Algebra II class and for SAT prep. I heard you took the PSAT your sophomore year and you scored high enough to be a semifinalist."

"Maybe, but it doesn't count your sophomore year, not for the competition. And there's no scholarship money if you're just a semifinalist."

"Well sucks to be you. You did good, though, right? You can help me."

"I guess."

She fished for her cigarettes in her back pocket and pulled out another smoke and put it between her lips, but she didn't light it. "Good. We'll meet at the public library. Tuesday and Thursday at 7 to 8:30 in the evening." That would be the three hours a week Mrs. Mason recommended. "You're done with practice by 5, right? You can grab some dinner and meet me there."

"I work at the dealership my dad manages from 7-10 Monday through Thursday."

"Shit. I really need a tutor. And I can't afford to pay for one. I think I might want to go to college."

He was looking at her very strangely.

"What, think I'm a hopeless case?"

"I could tutor you before school on Tuesdays. Coach wants me to start coming for a private 5:30 practice. We'll probably be done by 6:30."

"That leaves an hour and half before school starts. I need twice a week. Three hours a week at least."

"Sunday I get off work at 5 in the evening. You could come to my house for a couple hours. I guess you live close enough to bike to my house. Since you did."

She nodded.

"So, are we done now?" he asked.

"With this conversation?"

"Yeah."

"No," she said. "I thought we'd discuss puppy dogs and rainbows for another hour."

"Not unicorns?"

Tami laughed before she could stop herself. She'd never heard Eric Taylor be flippant before. "Fuck off," she said, and turned her back to him. She waited until she heard him start walking away before she turned back.


	9. Just Playing

**Chapter Nine**

**[****Tuesday]**

When Eric showed up in the locker room at 5:28 AM sharp Tuesday morning, Coach Hamilton was already in his office, door open, reviewing game tape. Eric popped his head in the door. "Do I need to suit up?"

"Not for what we're doing." Coach switched off the T.V. that stood on a cart beside his desk. When he stood up, he put a hand on either hip and studied Eric. "What brought you to Dillon, young man?"

"Uh…my dad's job."

"Usually people move out of Dillon for jobs, not in."

Eric shrugged. The local car dealership had been on the verge of bankruptcy, and bringing in his dad was a last ditch effort. Mr. Taylor had turned the business around, most notably with new sales incentives to which Buddy Garrity, in particular, had responded enthusiastically, and also with cost cutting measures.

"Did you have a lot of friends back in Odessa?"

"Some. Enough."

Coach plucked a football off his desk, came to the door, slid past Eric, and began walking through the locker room. Eric followed him to the field. As they walked, Coach asked, "What's your difficulty with Mo?"

"I don't….I don't have a difficulty with him."

"Clearly you do. What's the source? I keep a pretty close eye on my players. Mo can be…cocky, but he hasn't been particularly unkind to you. So why would you be unkind to him by insulting his girlfriend? You've got good manners most of the time."

"I don't know. I don't know what came over me. I wish I could give you an answer, but I can't." Eric had wanted to fight. He was angry at the world, and he'd just wanted to fight. He didn't think that was an answer that would please Coach, however. "It won't happen again."

They were on the field now. Eric dropped his bag by the bleachers and followed Coach to the first yard line. "Do you know why we're here this morning?" the man asked. "Why we're going to be here every morning for the rest of the season?" He handed Eric the football.

Eric took the ball and said, "Yes, sir. Because I picked a fight."

Coach laughed and shook his head. "No. We're here because you have potential. I'm going to give you some extra play time Friday, and you're not going to let me down. You're going to be my first-string quarterback by your senior near, if not before. But you need to shed whatever it is that's holding you back. You need to get out of your head."

What did that mean, anyway? Get out of his head?

"Let's begin."

**[Later...]**

"Not like that!" Coach Hamilton shouted.

Frustrated, Eric spiked the ball against the ground and put his hands on his hips. They'd been at this for an hour. They'd just gone out of bounds and were very near the bleachers now.

Maybe he should just quit the team. All of his teammates hated him anyway. What was he going to do, though, if he didn't have this outlet? He'd loved football in elementary school and junior high. His whole family would come out and watch him play – Debbie and Mom and Dad. Not just Dad.

"Listen." Coach scooped up the ball and shoved it back in Eric's hands. "You're going to make this throw again. Now close your eyes."

"What?"

"Close your eyes."

Eric shut them tightly. There was a bluish-black glow all around.

"Now imagine you're a kid again," Coach Hamilton insisted. "You're in your backyard, back in – Odessa was it?" Eric nodded. "And you're playing. With your friends, your cousins – you got cousins?"

"Yes, sir. Six of them."

"You're playing with your cousins. There's no crowd. No stadium. No band. No one to prove anything to but yourself. And you're just playing. Can you picture that?"

The scene was a blur at first, but then Eric could see it: the three-quarters of an acre they'd had in Odessa; his cousins, age six to eleven, goofing off with each other, talking pretend trash, flags hanging from the back of their pants. Debbie was doing exaggerated cheers beside the old shed, parodying the high school cheerleaders she'd seen the last time Dad took them to a football game. Eric could almost feel the carefree weightlessness of the moment. He could hear the laughter and taste the freedom.

"You there?"

Eric nodded.

"What season is it?"

"Early fall," Eric answered. "Leaves are just starting to turn." You could smell them, crisp and fresh.

"Who's there? Your cousins?"

"My cousins." Then he almost whispered, "And Debbie."

"Whose Debbie?"

"My sister."

"Didn't know you had one."

"She's dead."

Coach could have ruined the moment. He could have said he was sorry; he could have offered Eric the sympathy he'd heard a thousand times in Odessa, the sympathy of people who could never actually understand. But Coach didn't ruin it. He just kept painting the scene. "Debbie's there, cheering you all on. Leaves are just starting to turn, and you're just a kid. Just a kid playing football. A game you _love_. Now open your eyes, and throw that ball again."

The heat in Eric's muscles felt good as he made the throw; it tore through in a slow burn that made him feel completely alive. He watched the ball soar.

Coach Hamilton chuckled beside him and put a hand down on his shoulder. "Feels good, doesn't it?"

"Yes, sir."

Coach slapped his back. "A'ight. See you at practice after school."

As Coach walked down the field to recover the ball, Eric turned back toward the bleachers to grab his bag. Tami Hayes was sitting there now, in the first row. How long had she been there? How much had she heard? That girl was always overhearing things she shouldn't. His gym bag was between her feet. He bent to pick it up.

"My tutoring session was supposed to start five minutes ago," she said.

"Let me change real quick. I've been running."

"Now I'll lose ten minutes."

"We can do extra Sunday." He slung the bag over his shoulder.

Tami slid off the bleachers, stretching her long legs in front of her and pulling herself up leisurely. "Meet me at the picnic bench in the courtyard."

**[Later...]**

Tami stubbed out her cigarette on the patched ground underneath the picnic table when Eric showed up, his thick hair damp and sticking up all over. She looked him over, wondering why no one had ever mentioned he had a dead sister, why _he_ had never mentioned it, except to Coach Hamilton this morning.

Tami was glad now that she hadn't gossiped about his crying. Those tears probably had something to do with his sister. When had this Debbie girl died? How? Tami supposed those weren't the kind of questions you asked your tutor. So instead she asked, "You took a shower?"

"I was sweaty."

"That lost me another five minutes."

"We'll make it up." He sat down, slid his backpack on top of the table, and then crossed his hands in front of himself. "So, where do you want to start?"

"Wherever you think I should." She picked a fleck of stray tobacco off her tongue and blew it. It caught in the fall breeze.

"Well, where are your materials?"

"I don't have any materials. _You're_ turoting _me_."

Eric uncrossed his hands and shook his head. "Don't you have some sample SAT tests or a vocabulary list or something?"

"I thought you'd bring that," she said. "You're the genius."

"I'm a B+ student in a sub-par education system. I'm hardly a genius. If you didn't bring any SAT study materials, then let's jump into your Algebra. You brought your math book at least, right?"

Tami unzipped her solid black backpack with a single, florid woosh. She pulled out a thick book that had been coated in a brown paper wrapper over which she'd scrawled _Tears for Fears_, _Violent Femmes_, and _Depeche Mode_ along with some random doodles.

"Interesting taste in music," he said.

"Why? What do you like? Simon and Garfunkle?"

"Nothing wrong with Simon and Garfunkle. So what chapter are you on?"

She shrugged.

"You don't know?"

"I don't pay that close attention in class."

He slid the book toward himself and turned it over to scan the rest of the doodles. "Too busy fantazyzing about David Bowie?"

"I don't need to fantasize about anyone. I have a hot boyfriend. You manage to find a girlfriend yet?" It puzzled her, that he hadn't been seen coming onto any of the rally girls, even his own. He just thanked her politely for stuff. Maybe Mo was right. Maybe he really _was_ gay. Except she'd seen him noticing pretty girls. Not leering at them, but _noticing_. "You weren't at the homecoming dance. Shouldn't have been that hard to get a date. Even for you." She looked him over. He was slightly taller than Mo, and stockier. He didn't have much of a smile – at least, she hadn't seen him smile much – but his eyes were exceptional. "I mean…you're passable looking."

He opened the algebra book. He flipped to the third chapter. "Well you couldn't have gotten much farther than this in class. We'll start here. You have paper, right? And a pencil? Or would that have been too much trouble for you?"

She pulled out a notebook and pencil and he began to talk her through one of the problems. "Okay," he said, "factor four x squared plus 12 x plus five. Let me see you do that."

Tami felt her bravado waiver. She wanted to appear as if she didn't care about how far behind she was, but if she kept up this disinterested routine, he was going to give up the idea of helping her, and she needed his help. She needed a life that wasn't her mother's or her father's. "What's factor mean?" she asked quietly, almost shyly.

"Oh, Jesus! Are you serious? How did you manage to pass Algebra I?"

She grabbed the book from him and slammed it shut. "Never mind." She choked down the rising emotion. "This was a stupid idea!" Her voice sounded unsteady in her own ears, near breaking. She started to pull the book from the table and stand up, but he grabbed her wrist and held her still.

"Sit down," he ordered. "Just sit down."

She practically fell back to the bench.

"Just…okay," he said. "So you're a little behind. I'll talk you through it. Just sit down, okay?"

"I am sitting down." She swiveled on the bench to face him, but she kept her eyes bent on the notebook in front of her.

"We'll start on page one of chapter one." His voice was gently commanding. That was the only way she could think to describe it, as oxymoronic as that sounded. _Oxymoronic_. See. She knew a few SAT words already.

Over the next forty minutes, they went over problem after problem. He'd work an example for her, then talk her through another example, and then silently watch her try to work one herself, giving hints when she got stuck. He had to review some Algebra I terms, but she picked them up quickly. She started to feel somewhat confident. This stuff wasn't really _that_ hard. They had almost finished the first chapter of the textbook by the time the warning bell rung.

"I gotta get to class." Eric stood up, grabbed his backpack, and slung it over his shoulder. "Guess I'll see you Sunday at my house?"

She nodded.

Tami watched the way he walked as he left – purposeful but not cocky.

That afternoon, when she got home from school, Tami hugged her little sister Shelley and said, "I love you, you know."

Shelley squirmed out of her arms and asked, "Are you doing pot now?"

"No. Can't a big sister tell her little sister she loves her without being accused of being high?"

"No," Shelley said. "She can't. But I love you too."

"Druggie."


	10. Poor Choices

**Chapter Ten**

**[Wednesday]**

After practice, Mo and Eric cleaned toilets together on their knees. "Is this just punishment," Mo asked, "or do you think Coach expects us to bond over bleach?"

"Both." Although, Eric thought, this wasn't much of a bonding experience. There was, however, a sort of shared misery in the task.

"Guess you're used to this," Mo said. "Your dad makes you do janitorial stuff at the dealership, doesn't he?"

"Yeah. And wash the cars. I have to work for things. I had to _earn_ my truck."

Mo tossed the toilet brush on the tile floor. "What's your problem with me, Taylor? How do you know I didn't work for that Mustang?"

Eric didn't know. But that Mustang was a 1983. It was in seriously good shape. "Sorry," he muttered. "I just assumed. So…what do you do for work?"

Mo picked up the scrub brush. "I mow our lawn and I take out the trash."

Eric's mouth opened, but he shut it tight. He didn't say what he was thinking. He didn't say his father expected him to do that, and other chores, without compensation. He didn't say he worked 12 hours at the dealership during the week and 10 on weekends. He didn't even mention that Mo's own girlfriend worked 20 hours a week at the diner. He just said, "It's a nice car."

**[Thursday]**

Tami went straight to the diner after school on Thursday to pick up three hours of work. She was the only waitress on at the moment, which was fine given that there were only two customers – an elderly man who sat at the counter, and Eric's father, who was in a booth near the door, a bunch of papers spread out over the table. He was making notes with a pencil and drinking only coffee. Tami wouldn't have known it was him if she hadn't seen him with Eric on Saturday morning, though she probably could have guessed. They had the same dark brown hair and the same unusual hazel eyes.

"Sure you don't want something else with that?" she asked as she refilled his cup. "A piece of pie? We've got some great coconut pie." She hated it when customers only ordered coffee. She didn't know what Mr. Taylor tipped because the waitress who had taken over her table last time she served him had kept the tip. But in those days, a ten percent tip was the norm, fifteen percent was generous, and twenty percent was rarely heard of. On a 55 cent cup of coffee, she'd be lucky to get a dime.

"I'm watching my girlish figure," he said, and made another note on the page.

She chuckled. Mr. Taylor was an immense man. Not fat, just strong. He'd played for the AFL before it merged with the NFL, at which point his contract hadn't been renewed and he'd gone on to a career in management. "Don't like working at work?" she asked.

"I'm supposed to be meeting someone here to interview her for a secretary position, but she's already ten minutes late. I like to make good use of my time."

"Someone who can't show up on time for an interview probably won't make a good employee."

"Precisely."

"I always show up on time. Early, actually," Tami said. "How much does that position pay?"

He chuckled. "I'm sure you're an excellent waitress…" He glanced at the name tag pinned to her shirt. Apparently he'd forgotten her name since Eric's introduction. "….Tami, but I need someone with a minimum of five years secretarial experience who can work full-time."

"I wasn't asking for me. My mom's a secretary at Second Baptist, but it's a church, you know, so it doesn't pay that well. She's been looking for a better paying job. Where did you post the job announcement?"

"_Dillon Times_."

"Oh, almost no one actually reads that one. You need to put it in the _Dillon Gazette_."

"Duly noted, Ms. Hayes." So he remembered her last name, even though that wasn't on her name tag, which probably meant he associated her with her father.

"My mom's very reliable. She's separated from my father. They're nothing alike."

He pulled his briefcase from under the table, set it on the table top, and clicked it open. He handed her a business card: Mr. James Edward Taylor, Senior Manager, Dillon GM. "Tell your mother she can fax her resume to the number on that card if she's interested."

Tami thanked him and tucked the card into her front shirt pocket.

"And as a matter of fact, that coconut pie is starting to sounds pretty good. Unless you have key lime."

"We've got an excellent key lime, actually." That would bring his bill to $2.10, which should mean a twenty to forty cent tip, depending on how generous he was.

After Tami had deposited Mr. Taylor's pie on his table, she went back behind the counter. The old guy had left, leaving four dollars to pay his $3.95 check. Tami sighed, slid the money off the counter, went to the register, and pocketed her measly five cent tip.

The bells on the door jangled as Mo walked in. He slid onto one of the stools at the counter and said, "Hey, baby cakes."

Tami had giggled the first time he'd called her that, but she didn't much care for the name now. She'd have preferred "babe" or "hon" or "beautiful" or just about anything else. How did you tell a guy, though, that you didn't like one of his pet names for you? You didn't. You just smiled. She leaned with her elbows on the counter top and kissed him.

"When do you get off?" he asked.

"Donna comes in to take over at six." That was when the dinner crowd picked up. Tami didn't have enough seniority to get that shift.

Mo glanced at his watch. "Fifteen minutes. My parents don't get home until seven. What do you say we go over to my place and get horizontal?"

"Romantic." At least he hadn't said "do the nasty," which was his usual euphemism.

"Come on. It's been a while. You look like you could use a good boinking."

"Shhh!" she glanced over his shoulder at Mr. Taylor, who had apparently given up on his interviewee and was packing up his papers.

"You know what's been a while?" she whispered. "Since you took me out some place nice. Since you wrote me a love note."

She grabbed Mr. Taylor's check and brought it to his table. "I'll get that when you're ready," she said. In the meantime, another guy had taken a seat in the booth behind Mr. Taylor, so she took his order too. When she went to get him coffee, she saw Mo scribbling on a napkin. When she came back to the counter after serving her new customer, Mo was gone, but he'd left the napkin:

Roses are red  
But my balls are blue  
You're so hot  
And I love you.

Mo

PS. Meet me in the lot when you get off.

She crumpled the napkin and shoved it in the pocket of her apron. The door jingled as Mr. Taylor walked out. When she went to clear his plate, there was a $5 bill on top of the check. She ran after him, and he turned around as she pushed through the door. "You forgot your change," she said.

"Keep it. That's your tip."

"_Oh._ Thanks."

He turned and kept walking to his car, and her eyes were redirected to the scene happening by Mo's Mustang. Mo was leaned against his car smoking, and Tami's father was standing in front of him, bothering him about something. Mo was clearly trying to put him off, but he finally pulled some money out of his wallet and handed it to him.

Tami thundered across the gravel parking lot, shouting, "Don't give him that, Mo. Don't give him a dime."

"Come on, sweetheart," her dad said. "You've got a generous boyfriend. Ain't nothin' wrong with that." As Mr. Hayes walked away, Mr. Taylor drove by him. Tami's dad flicked Mr. Taylor off. That wasn't going to help her mom get the secretary job.

Tami turned on Mo and glared at him. "I told you never to give him money."

"It got rid of him, didn't it?" Mo said.

Tami ran after her father, who by now was at his own pick-up. "Give it back," she demanded as he opened the door. Her dad whirled around. She could smell it – moonshine. He must be making it himself now, or getting it from someone who did. "I can't believe you're about to drive," she said. "You're going to get another DUI." The last time, he only got forty hours of community service. A second time might actual mean jail time. Of course, that might do him some good.

He shrugged. She grabbed at the money he was still holding in his hand. He yanked it back. "You want your boyfriend's money, do ya? Does your mother even know you have a boyfriend? I don't think she does. And I don't think she'd approve. And if you want me to keep quiet about it, you better let me keep this."

Tami let go of the bills. "You know what, fine. Keep it. Drink yourself into the grave for all I care."

"That's no sort of thing to say to your father."

"I don't have a father. The last time I can remember you being a father to me, I was nine."

"Girl, don't blame me for your poor choices. Just 'cause I screwed up my life doesn't mean I'm responsible for you screwin' up yours."

"What are you talking about? What poor choices?"

He pointed over her shoulder at Mo. "That one for instance."

She glanced back at Mo, who was still waiting for her by her Mustang. "What's wrong with Mo? He's a decent enough boyfriend. Hell of a lot better boyfriend than you are a husband. He just gave you money. Now you're going to go criticize him?"

"Well now, sweetheart, if he really loved you, he'd of done what you asked and _not_ given me money, wouldn't he of?"

"Fuck off," she said.

Her dad raised an unsteady finger. "Language!"

She turned her back. "Don't kill anyone on your way home." When she got to Mo she said, "I've got to make a phone call, and then when Donna comes we can go back to your house. I think I could use a distraction after all."

Mo smiled. "I'll make it worth your while, baby cakes. I promise."

Back in the diner, she called the cops to report a potential drunk driver.


	11. Stepping It Up

**Chapter Eleven**

**[Friday]**

The next morning, Tami's dad was released, after a night in hold-up, on his own recognizance. He found Tami after school and asked her for money again. Partly to get rid of him, and partly to make sure he didn't keep driving drunk, and partly to get herself the set of wheels she'd been wanting for a year, Tami made a low-ball offer on the used pickup Buddy Garrity had sold him. He consented to the deal, mumbling that it was a piece of crap anyway, but Tami thought it ran fine, except for the occasional sputter. She dropped her dad off at his run-down apartment complex (a one-story complex consisting of ten motel-like dwellings), and then ran the truck by the dealer for a free inspection and tune up, which her father probably could have gotten long ago if he had asked with a smile instead of a drunken curse. She had it back in time for the game.

That night, Tami found herself next to Buddy Garrity in the stadium. She always tried to get in the front row to cheer on Mo, and Buddy was usually somewhere along that line too, because he was a booster now. He was low on the totem pole of boosters – no influence – but he had a lot of ideas. On the other side of Buddy was Mr. Taylor. Tami thought it was strange that Eric's mom wasn't there with him.

With only a few minutes left in the game, the Panthers were down slightly. Coach Hamilton pulled Mo and put in Eric. "What the hell is he doing?" Buddy grumbled as Eric jogged out onto the field and got in place. "You don't put in your second string at a time like this."

Mr. Taylor cleared his throat.

Buddy smiled apologetically. "I mean, I like Eric, I do, but bringing him in _now_?" As if to prove Buddy right, Eric fumbled almost immediately.

Mr. Taylor turned to Buddy. "He'll step it up. You'll see."

"I'm sure he will," Buddy agreed, as though he'd just remembered who singed his paychecks.

A little bit later, Coach Hamilton called a time out.

"He better be putting McArnold back in," Buddy muttered, half under his breath. Instead, Coach Hamilton called over Eric, talked to him for a minute, head bent, and then sent him back in.

In the end, the Panthers won just before the clock ran out, with Eric using a pump fake to escape the defensive end and then spinning his way into the end zone, a move that would be talked about for the next six days.

"That's my boy!" Mr. Taylor shouted, and then looked at Buddy as though to say, "I told you so."

**[FNL]**

Eric's teammates were all slapping him. He felt a dozen hands beat their approval. Suddenly, he wasn't a freak anymore. Funny how that worked.

After the game, he ran to the bleachers, where people were hanging over the rails to hug and pat their players. Tami had hoisted herself up and looked like she was about to fall off as she kissed Mo. Eric turned his eyes from her to his father.

Mr. Taylor stood straight with his hands resting on the rail, nodded, and said, "Well done, son."

"Thanks," Eric muttered. He scratched the back of his head. "That was pretty….I did good, huh?"

"You won," his dad said.

"Yeah." Eric looked to his left and then to his right. "Well…uh….I better get changed."

"I guess you're going out to celebrate with the guys. Remember curfew is midnight."

"Yes, sir."

**[FNL]**

This time when the guys asked him out after the game, Eric joined them. Tonight's celebrations were tame, anyway: no girls and a few beers down by the lake.

Mo McArnold was generous. Eric had to give him that much credit at least. Being eighteen and possessed of cash, Mo had happily bought beer for everyone. There was talk that the Texas legislature was going to raise the legal drinking age to 19 next year.

Eric sat on the tailgate of his own pickup, choking down the cheap brew. He was still getting used to the taste. In a few years, he wouldn't believe there was ever a time he hadn't liked beer.

Mo leapt up next to Eric and came down with a thud. "Guess I don't need to train you up," he said. "Guess you just went and seized the reins."

"You played good too."

Mo snorted. "Doesn't matter. I've already got an offer anyway. I'm glad you won the game for us."

Either Mo was nicer when he was drunk, or Eric hadn't been giving him enough credit. Maybe it was a little of both.

"Hear you're tutoring my girlfriend." Mo said. "You don't mind tutoring a slut?"

"Look. I should have never said that, man. I'm sorry. She's not a slut."

Mo laughed. "You know, it's all right. I forgive you. Honest? I started dating her because I heard she was easy. I thought I'd get laid right away. It actually took almost three months, and it turned out I was the first guy she'd ever gone _all_ the way with."

Maybe that was why Mo had _started_ dating her, Eric thought, but he must obviously like more than that about her now. They'd been together six months. They were going steady. Tami had Mo's letter jacket. Eric took another sip of his beer. This was only his third to Mo's sixth, but he was already feeling it. He'd have to slow down. And chew some gum. No way he was going home to his father's house with beer on his breath.

"But she was worth waiting for," Mo said. "You know, Tami's really good at - "

"-I don't want know, man. That's your girl. I don't need to know the details."

Mo chuckled. "You know what the guys call you, behind your back? Prude McGude."

"Clever. Rhymes and everything. Usually though, when you mock someone, you try to come up with a pun on his _actual_ name."

Mo shrugged. "Taylor's hard. Eric doesn't rhyme with anything. Stop nursing that thing, you little baby."

They ended up shooting beer cans with BB guns in an opening in the woods by the lake. A running back named Scooter ended up getting shot in the ass, and it left a serious welt, which the punter, Johnny McMann, insisted on dousing with alcohol as a form of medical intervention.

"It's okay, Scooter, man," Eric laughed, "it looks kind of like a tattoo. Like a yen-yen. Yang. Yin-yang. That eastern stuff."

"Yeah!" Mo agreed, his arm around Eric's shoulders. "We should all do it! We should all get matching tattoos!"

"On our asses?" Eric slipped out from under his arm and stumbled back a bit.

"Hell yeah!" Mo said, raising his beer can to the sky.

"That doesn't sound like a good idea to me."

"Prude McGude!" Mo shouted. The other guys started chanting the name in chorus.

"That name doesn't make any fucking sense!" Eric insisted.

"Oooooohhhh!" cried Johnny. "Taylor dropped an f-bomb. Stop the presses!"

"Give 'em a break," Scooter insisted.

Mo was now standing over the fire they'd lit earlier and holding his pocket knife out in the flames. "You think this is sanitized enough?" he asked.

"No I do not," Eric replied.

"You first, Prude McGude," Mo insisted.

When Eric refused, two linebackers grabbed his arms on either side and pinned him in place, while Mo yanked down his pants. The blade was just beginning to prick his skin when a horn blared and his arms were released. He jerked up his boxers and pants and then turned around. He raised one arm to shield his eyes from the glaring high beams. The lights went off just as the pick-up did. "What are you idiots doing?" Tami Hayes asked as she slammed the door and strutted forward.

Eric's face felt as if he'd just held it over the fire.

"We're initiating the new QB," Mo said, shoving Eric against the shoulder. "It was late in coming, but we're finally doing it. Why, what are you doing here?"

"I figured I better check on my drunk ass boyfriend before he drove home and accidentally killed someone. I didn't think you'd kill someone in the woods with a knife, though." She smirked. "Guess I gave you too little credit."

Mo chuckled and walked forward and kissed her. She turned her face away. "No one kisses me unless he's sober. You know my rule."

"I know, I know," he said, and slapped her ass instead. She pushed him away. She did it as if she was being playful, but Eric thought he saw a little anger in that shove.

"So how'd you know to find us here?" Mo asked.

"I was out driving. I could hear you hooting it up a mile away. Now which of you boys needs a safe ride home?"

A chorus of woots went up and Johnny McMann stepped forward grabbing his crotch. "I could use a ride all right, Tami, baby."

"Hey, hey hey!" Mo shouted. There was sudden silence. From what Eric had heard, nearly everyone had tried to come on to Tami behind Mo's back, but no one had ever dared do it in his presence.

Johnny was particularly drunk, but not drunk enough not to back pedal. "Just kidding, man, Mo, man, just –"

Soon the two football players were tumbling on the ground. Eric stepped out of the way of the wrestling match.

"You know what, y'all," Tami hollered over the noise. "All y'all's a bunch of children. Y'all can walk home."

Which was precisely what Eric tried to do. He stumbled his way from the lake to the highway, figuring he'd ride his bike back tomorrow to get his vehicle. He'd staggered about a half a mile on the shoulder when a pick-up slowed beside him. "Get in," Tami shouted out the rolled down passenger's window. "I know where you live, and it isn't walking distance."

He clambered up into the cab and warmed his hands in front of the heater. It was 48 degrees, but to a Texan used to hot weather, it felt cold. "Thanks," he muttered.

"What was Mo doing back there?" she asked. "With the knife?"

Eric glanced at himself in the rearview mirror. The crimson blush flamed back. "He was just gonna try to tattoo me."

Tami laughed. "So I literally saved your ass?"

Eric forgot his embarrassment for moment and laughed too. "Yeah. I guess so. Wish you could figuratively save it when my dad sees me."

"Oh, he's probably asleep by now. Just sneak in real quiet."

"You sound like an old pro at that sort of thing."

"Sneaking in and out?" she asked. "Yeah. You would too if you were already a senior and you still had a ten o'clock curfew on the weekend."

When they were a block from his house, she said, "I'm going to turn the headlights out now. I'll roll up very slowly, so your folks don't hear. Leave the door open when you jump out, and I'll shut it when I'm a block away. Then sneak in real slow. That's how you do it."

Eric was pleasantly surprised by her unexpected kindness. "Hey, thanks."

When she was down to a mere crawl, he half stepped, half leapt from the truck.

As he turned unsteadily around to wave his gratitude, Tami leaned all the way across the cab, grabbed the handle of the open door, and shouted at full volume in the silent night, "Nice ass by the way!" Then she slammed the door shut with incredible force and gunned the engine.

The porch light of Eric's house flicked on like a prison spotlight.


	12. Caught

**Chapter Twelve**

Tami didn't stop laughing for at least a block. It served Eric right for calling her a slut. He wasn't exactly pure himself, getting drunk and up to God-knows-what in those woods. Let his father put him in his place. She didn't think Mr. Taylor would be overly harsh about it. Good tippers were never complete assholes.

Tami had wanted to go cruising in her new pickup tonight. She'd done it windows down, despite the cool fall weather. Then she'd heard the boys down by the lake. She couldn't resist crunching her way down that embankment. The truth was, she was a little jealous of the comradery.

Tami had never had a lot of female friends. Even growing up, during family gatherings, she tended to gravitate to whatever room the men were in. The women just sat around and talked about boring things like shoes and home décor and how useless their husbands were. The men, on the other hand, argued with passion about football and politics. They had _interesting_ conversations.

Tami didn't like it when Mo didn't bring her along with guys, but she understood that sometimes he just needed to be with them. Male bonding. She got that, she did, but it seemed like lately he never brought her along. In fact, he only seemed to call her up when he was horny. He used to take her out on real dates and even write her little love notes - all that serious boyfriend stuff. He'd eased up on that lately. She wondered if he wasn't phasing her out in anticipation of graduation. That was still months away, but he'd be going off to A&M and she'd be behind in Dillon, if she didn't manage to get to college somewhere else. She certainly wasn't getting into A&M, anyway.

Tami didn't know what hurt more at the thought of an end to their relationship – her heart or her pride. She was somebody when she was with Mo. He was the Panthers star quarterback – at least until tonight, when Eric had temporarily assumed the mantle. But unlike Eric, Mo was popular with almost everyone. It was nice to date someone who was actually _liked_, to be Mo's girl, to be somebody other than the daughter of the town drunk.

Of course, it would have been even nicer just to be herself. Tami Hayes. An individual in her own right. Not somebody's daughter. Not somebody's girlfriend. Not somebody who existed only in relationship to a man. And maybe it was time to be that individual, to work her way into college, to get back to the wide-eyed little girl she used to be, in love with all the wild possibilities of the world.

She'd have to ask Eric to up the tutoring to three days a week.

**[FNL]**

For a moment, Eric stood wavering on the porch, considering his options. He could sneak around the back, but he didn't have a key to that door, so he was out of luck if it was locked. He could walk in the front and pretend be to sober and just past curfew, but he wasn't sure how articulate he could be right now. He could turn and run, hide out somewhere, and come back when he was sober.

Eric hated it when he failed to meet his father's expectations. It was bad enough when he'd gotten that C+ in English last year. His dad had scanned the report card, past all the A's and the single B+, and zeroed in on that English grade. For a week after, a cloud of silent disappointment had followed his father from room to room. Coming home drunk? That was going to be ten times worse.

Eric was just turning to go around to the back when the front door opened. He closed his eyes and braced himself for his father's words. But he heard his mother's voice instead. "Eric, honey, what are you doing out here so late?"

He turned. She had a different bathrobe on tonight – thick and white.

"I was just with the guys," he said, hoping his words weren't slurring. He stepped up into the house and moved sideways past her, holding his breath.

"Your dad went to sleep an hour ago. He said you did real well at the game. He's proud of you."

"Is he?" Eric hadn't meant to speak again, but he was so unused to his mother talking to him these days that he couldn't help it.

He could tell from her expression that she smelled the beer on his breath. Her nose wrinkled. But she only said, "You better get to bed right now."

**[Saturday]**

The next morning, Eric tried not to look hung over as he dressed for Saturday morning mass. He waited for his dad to figure it out and come down hard on him, but Mr. Taylor only straightened his tie and said, "Looks like you didn't sleep much. When did you get in last night?"

Mrs. Taylor, who was pouring herself a cup of coffee, said, "He came in a little late. A little past curfew. He'd lost his watch. You found it now, didn't you, honey?"

"Yes, ma'am," Eric said, relieved – not just relieved because she wasn't telling his father, but because he was hearing her voice.

"Y'all have a nice time at church this morning," she said as they stepped through the kitchen door.

**[FNL]**

Eric only went to confession after mass on Saturdays. His father went daily, but Eric thought a once-a-week accounting was mortifying enough. He wondered how his dad could possibly have that much to confess. He didn't used to go so frequently. Eric wondered if maybe the confessional was his father's way of getting the counseling he'd begged his mother to get. But Dad wanted Mom to go to a psychiatrist, not a priest. He kept telling Mom, "You need to take something," as though a pill could magically turn her back into the woman she used to be.

In the confessional this morning, Eric crossed himself and said, "Bless me, father, for I have sinned. It has been a week since my last confession." Then he began his rapid-fire launch: "I used foul language. I lied to my father by omission. I've abused myself. I've-"

"- My son, euphemisms are not appreciated. Just start saying you masturbated."

"I…uh…got drunk. And I…I think that's about it."

The priest assigned his penance and asked him to say the act of contrition. He absolved Eric and then said, "That was an amazing touchdown last night, by the way."

Startled, Eric replied, "I thought the confessional was supposed to be anonymous."

"My son, I know my sheep by voice."

"Oh. But…you can't tell _anyone_ what I say in here, right?"

The priest chuckled. "No, my son. You know everything you say in here is between you and me and God alone."

When Eric returned to the now nearly empty chapel, he found his father kneeling at the far end of the second pew. He sat behind him and waited. When his father rose and kicked up the kneeler, Eric said, "You ready to go?" His father turned and nodded. They walked in silence to the car.

**[FNL]**

Tami glanced at the door to the diner when the bells jangled. Mr. Taylor and Eric walked in and slid into either side of a booth. Eric's jaw clenched when he saw her. No doubt he was angry about her little prank last night, but he couldn't be in too much trouble if his dad was taking him to breakfast. One after another, three customers came up to Eric and shook his hand. He looked a little confused by these strangers' congratulations, while Mr. Taylor seemed proud of their acknowledgment of his son's qualities as a player.

As Donna started walking toward their table, Tami grabbed her by the wrist and said, "Let me have that table."

Donna looked Eric up and down and said, "Oh, I see why, honey. I don't blame you. If I was twenty years younger…mhmmm…hmmmm…."

"God no!" Tami said. "That's not why! I'm just trying to get my mom a job at the dealership his dad manages."

"Sure, honey. You've got no desire to chat up that cute young man over there." Donna winked. "His dad's easy on the eyes too. If he didn't have a wedding ring on, I might _insist_ on the table."

Tami rolled her eyes. If she wanted to "chat up" Eric she could do it at any one of their tutoring sessions. Donna wasn't wrong though. He _was_ cute. He'd probably be better looking than Mo if he smiled more often and put on just a little more muscle.

Eric didn't look at her when she took their order. He acted like he still needed to study the menu. She wrote down what they wanted and said to Mr. Taylor, "My mom faxed her resume over yesterday afternoon. Did you get it?"

"I did," Mr. Taylor assured her. "It's in the pile. I don't stay past five on game nights, so I didn't have a chance to review it, but I'll be in the office later today."

"You wouldn't want miss an opportunity to hire her, Mr. Taylor. She's really good at her job."

Mr. Taylor chuckled. He slid out of the booth. "I need to wash my hands. Which way's the restroom?" She pointed in the obvious direction.

When he was out ear shot, Eric flicked shut his menu and said, "Thanks a lot for trying to get me in trouble last night. What did I ever do to you?"

"Hmmm….you mean besides picking a fight with my boyfriend and saying I'd had a lot of practice giving head and that I was a slut?"

"Shhh…" Eric looked around the diner nervously.

"What, too embarrassed to have me say in public what you had no problem saying?"

"I said I was sorry, okay?"

She shrugged. "Did you get grounded?"

"No. No thanks to you, but my dad didn't know I came home drunk last night."

"Listen, I need to up the tutoring to three days a week. Another hour session. Can you do that?" She'd chosen Eric because she could get him for free, but he was actually a good tutor. Their first session together, he'd surprised her. He made a lot more sense than the teacher did, and even though he grumbled a little, he was patient.

He sighed and leaned back against the orange seat of the booth. "I have a job. I have football practice, and games, and my own studies. I have homework too, you know."

"Fine," she said. "Forget about it. Sorry I asked to invade your precious time. We'll just stick with Tuesday morning and Sunday evening then. We're still on for tomorrow evening at your house, right?"

"Yeah. Try not to slam the door when you come in."

She was about to issue a sarcastic comeback when she heard Mr. Taylor say, "Excuse me." She stepped aside so he could get back in the booth. As he slid in, he looked at Tami as though to ask, "Why are you still standing here?"

"Did you want decaf coffee, Mr. Taylor, or regular?"

"You've already poured me coffee," he said.

"Oh. So I have." She smiled and left to put in their order.


	13. The Letter

**Author's Note: Thank you for any and all reviews. Hearing people are reading and what they like about the story is encouraging. **

**Chapter Thirteen**

**[Sunday Evening]**

The Taylor house was a one story L-shaped rambler, with a front door, a kitchen door, and a back door. Tami knocked on the front door, but Eric opened the kitchen door around the corner and hollered, "Come in this way."

Eric's mother was wearing an ankle-length blue house dress, standing by the sink, and looking out the window. When Eric introduced Tami, Mrs. Taylor said only, "Mhmmmmmm" and didn't even turn around.

Eric shrugged apologetically and began walking away, saying, "We'll use the living room."

Just as they were about to step through the kitchen entryway, Mrs. Taylor suddenly whirled and said, "Cookies? Y'all want cookies?"

Eric appeared mortified, but Tami answered, "Sure, Mrs. Taylor. I'd love some cookies."

"Oh," Mrs. Taylor replied. "Oh. I don't guess I have any. Sorry." And then she turned back to the window again.

Eric led Tami to the living room. Apparently, in the Taylor house, homework got done on the coffee table and not the kitchen table. It seemed a little uncomfortable to Tami, but she went along with it. She sat on the floor on the opposite side of Eric, her legs stretched out underneath the table and to the other side. He was cross-legged.

"Where's your dad?" Tami asked. "Does he stay at the dealership until it closes?"

"He usually leaves at five on Sundays. But he's out grocery shopping."

Tami raised an eyebrow. How odd. Her father had certainly never done the grocery shopping, even back when he was sober. "Your mom's a little off," she said.

"I guess." Eric opened her text book and began flipping through the pages.

"Is it because your sister died?"

A page froze in mid-air between Eric's hands. "You overheard me with Coach on Monday?"

"Yeah. So…when did she die?"

"Early in my freshman year."

"How?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Okay. But your mom looks depressed. She should really get some help."

He slammed the book shut. "You think I don't know that? My dad keeps asking her to, but she won't okay? She just keeps saying she's fine."

Tami held up her hands. "Okay, then. Sorry I mentioned it. Let's study."

Eyeing her warily, Eric opened the text book again. They worked a few problems together. He was tense and grumpy at first, but then he seemed to get into the swing of tutoring. He seemed almost excited when a concept clicked with her.

"Huh," he said. "This one uses geometry for some reason. Guess you'll need to review that for the SAT's anyway. We need a compass. I'll get it from my room." He started to stand up but fell back with a groan. "Owww…leg's asleep. Hold on."

"I'll get it." Tami stood. He was still struggling to get up when she was half way down the hall. "Is it in your desk drawer?"

"Yeah. Room's the second on the left." She glanced back and saw he was rubbing his leg. "Top drawer on the right."

His room was surprisingly not a mess. Mo's usually was. Mo's room wasn't as bad as her sister's Shelley, which always bore the mark of a passing tornado, but he usually had some clothes on the floor, rumpled sheets, and stuff spread out all over his desk. Eric's bed was made up. His desk was almost entirely clear, except for two Pop Warner trophies. She giggled at the thought that he still kept them. Of course, she still had that 7th grade oratorical contest medal in a drawer somewhere, didn't she? And she hadn't competed in a speech competition for over four years.

Even Eric's walls were neat. He didn't have a pin-up calendar like Mo did. His posters were all of sports figures and musicians, and they were pretty well aligned. He had one of Danny White and one of Tony Dorsett. Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon poster hung on his left wall, and on the right hung that Rolling Stones one with the tongue. Why did guys love that poster so much? Did they all lamely imagine they were masters of cunilingus? Also on the wall above his desk was The Who. It all surprised her a little bit. She had assumed he would like country.

She slid open the top drawer on the left. She'd heard him say right, but sometimes she got turned around when it came to directions. Mo made fun of her for that all the time.

Eric's drawers weren't as neat as the rest of the room. This one was filled with pencil shavings and pens and promotional key chains, and on top of all that rested a half-folded, handwritten letter. The script was girlish and some of the i's were dotted with hearts. Did he have a girlfriend back in Odessa? For some reason it hadn't occurred to her that he might not have come on to any of the rally girls because he was being faithful to someone back home. She knew she shouldn't look, but she was just too curious. Tami slid the letter out.

Dear Eric,

Happy 14th birthday, butt face. Here's ten bucks because I never know what to buy you. Don't spend it all in one place. By the way, you're a pretty cool brother.

Love,

Debbie

"What are you doing?"

Tami jammed the letter back in the drawer and slid it shut. Eric was looming in the door frame. He was taller than she'd realized. At least, he seemed so at the moment. "Just looking for the compass."

"I said top right," he said tightly.

"Yeah, I got mixed up." She slid open the top right drawer and pulled out the compass. She held it up. "Ready," she said.

His eyes were narrowed at her the whole way back to the living room. When they were sitting down again, she rested the compass flat against paper. "So, what do we do with this?"

"You're nosy, you know. Anyone ever tell you you're damn nosy?"

She slid the compass across the table at him. "Why don't you ever talk about your sister? That's just weird."

"My parents don't like to. So I don't."

"Screw your parents. What about you? Do _you_ want to talk about her?"

He stared at her, fire flickering in the hazel of his eyes, his lips pressed tight.

"What was she like?"

"Annoying," he said. "Smart." She thought he wasn't going to say anymore, but then the words began to flow out of him. "Debbie read like crazy, all these books, and every different kind of genre too. She just read and wrote a lot, which was strange, because none of the rest of us…I mean…I read, sure, but mostly nonfiction, mostly when I want to know something."

"What was her favorite book?"

"I don't know. It had this really long title. The Mixed up Files of Somebody or Another. This girl and her brother run away to this huge museum in New York."

"The Met."

"Yeah the Met. And they fish for coins in the fountain at night so they can eat the next morning. She was always trying to get me to run away and do that with her, but I told her Odessa didn't have any really cool museums."

"The Mixed up Files of Basil E. Frankwieler. That's the book."

"Yeah. Why? Have you read it?"

Tami nodded. Eric's brow was furrowed as though he couldn't believe she had read and remembered a book.

"I used to read a lot too when I was younger."

"Why'd you stop?"

She shrugged. "The other girls made fun of me starting in about eighth grade. Called me a book worm."

"That's a stupid reason to stop. Debbie never cared what anyone else thought about her. Except me. I think she cared what I thought."

"Well, you were her big brother. You were probably her idol."

Eric swallowed and looked down at the coffee table. "So…um…." She could tell he was trying to get his emotions in check. "You need to measure the angles of that shape."

She didn't push the subject. "So I line it up like this, then?"

They made it almost to the end of the second chapter. As Tami was packing up, Eric said, "You're not stupid, you know. You've just obviously never tried before. Considering you're practically starting from scratch, you're picking this up pretty quickly. Quicker than I would have under the same circumstances."

Tami smiled only slightly. She _was_ a little proud of how far she'd come in only two sessions, but she knew she still had a long way to go. She slung her backpack over her shoulder.

"Listen," he said, "about that third session…I think I might be able to squeeze it in." He scratched the back of his neck. "Saturday night my dad usually stays late at the dealership doing the books, but I'm always done with my work by ten, and I just have to wait around for him because we ride together. You could come by the dealership. I could tutor you there for an hour."

Tami mulled it over. She'd have to get special permission from her mother to stay out past her ten o'clock Saturday curfew. Usually she just snuck out and in, but it hardly seemed worth the effort for a tutoring session. Maybe Mom would make an exception in this case, especially since Mr. Taylor would be around.

"I guess you have better things to do on a Saturday night," he said.

"No. I'll do it."

Eric walked her to the kitchen door. His mom was at the table with a pile of half opened mail in front of her. She was staring somewhat vacantly at a junk mail letter. "Thanks for offering the cookies, Mrs. Taylor," Tami said. "Even if you didn't have any. It was a nice thought."

Mrs. Taylor looked up from the letter and smiled weakly.

"You know," Tami said, "Dillon's a small town, but there's a Women's Center on Main Street. They offer _free_ counseling for your first three sessions. My mom used to work there as a secretary, years ago. I hear they're really good at helping people. I'd absolutely go there if I needed counseling. They're very confidential too."

Eric had the door held open wide now. Tami took the hint and stepped out. As she left, she heard Mrs. Taylor say, "She's not nearly as shy as your first girlfriend was" and Eric reply, "She's not my girlfriend."


	14. Rivalry Week

**Chapter Fourteen**

**[Sunday Night]**

When the flames began to flicker in the front yard later that night, Eric was doing his Trigonometry homework on the coffee table. His mom was already in bed, but his father was sitting in an arm chair tallying numbers using a calculator that rested on the hassock.

Eric walked to the window and looked out. He felt his father's presence behind him, large and steady. "Is that the Klan?" Eric asked.

He turned to his father for an answer, but the man was already headed back to his bedroom for the shotgun. Loading a shell, he returned down the hallway.

"Dad?" Eric followed in his bare feet as his father slammed open the front door, walked out, pumped his shot gun, and pointed it at the tiny group of white-clad men. There were only three.

Eric ran to the side of the house and started to unravel the garden hose.

"Get the hell off my lawn!" His dad was yelling when he returned.

"I thought you papists was pacifists!" one of them yelled back. "Figured you was too busy sucking on the tit of the whore of Babylon to learn how to use a shot gun."

Eric turned the handle to the hardest setting and began to douse the cross. When the flames flickered out, he turned the hose on one of the klansmen and sprayed him too. The man looked pathetic in his wet white linen as he stumbled backward, and Mr. Taylor let out a hearty laugh.

As the men began to run away, Eric chased after them barefoot, laughing and spraying, as far as the hose would go. When he came back, he collapsed next to his father, who was sitting on the deacon's bench on their porch, his shot gun now propped against the wall of the house.

"Guess your car wash skills came in handy," his father said between bouts of laughter.

Eric's mom stepped out onto the porch. Her feet were bare, and her bathrobe was tied tightly around her waist. "I thought the Klan opened membership to Catholics ten years ago," she said. "I guess the news didn't reach Dillon." She was actually laughing.

She took a step closer to the deacon's bench, and Mr. Taylor grabbed her around the waist and pulled her onto his lap as she let out a little yelp. He kissed her on the cheek.

"I'll go, James," she whispered. "I'll see someone. I will."

**[Monday Afternoon]**

At lunch, Eric took his usual spot alone at the far end of the geek's table, but a minute later he was surrounded by Panthers, who pushed the geeks aside to take their place.

"Guess this is the football table now," Mo announced. Then, looking at Eric - "How'd you get home Friday night?"

"Walked." He didn't know if it was advisable to tell Mo Tami had given him a ride.

"We slept it off in the woods for a couple of hours," Mo said. "My Dad was pissed when I came in at three in the morning. He took the keys to my car for two days."

Eric noticed that three of the black players were staring at him intently. It made him a little nervous. Finally, one of them spoke. "Is it true?" Scooter asked.

"Is what true?" Eric pulled his milk carton a little closer.

"Did the Klan show up on your lawn last night?"

"Uh…yeah." How had Scooter heard about that? Word really did travel fast in a small town.

"Why?" Scooter asked.

"They don't like Catholics I guess," Eric answered. "We're Catholic."

Scooter's face broke out into a smile. "Heard your dad blasted one of them in the ass and the idiot was still pulling out buckshot in the morning."

Before Eric could respond, Booker, popped in, "I heard you beat one of 'em with a garden hose until his face was bloody."

"I heard your mom came out," Charlie said, "and threw a glass of wine on one of 'ems crotches and then dropped a match. And then the other ten just ran, man, just _ran_."

Eric chuckled, amused by the way a small truth could be exaggerated into a tall tale in less than a day. Then he thought of Tami, of all the things he'd heard rumoured about her when he first moved to Dillon – that she'd lost her virginity in ninth grade, that she'd given out blow jobs in the boy's bathroom, that she'd been around half the baseball team before she'd moved onto the football team. The truth was always tamer than the rumor.

"You're all right, you know," Scooter said. He raised a hand in high five position.

Eric, half smiling, slapped it. "That's all a little bit exaggerated."

"Whatever," Scooter said. "You and your Dad got the assholes somehow right?"

"What assholes?"

Eric turned to see Tami standing behind him.

"Hey, baby cakes," Mo said, patting his knees. "Come sit on daddy's lap."

Tami rolled her eyes, but she walked around the table and slid onto his lap and draped her arms around his neck. Eric looked away when they kissed. He looked back when Mo said, "You didn't hear about how Eric whooped the Klan?"

"The Klan?" Tami asked, glancing at Eric curiously. "Does Dillon still _have_ the Klan? And what do they want with _Eric_?"

"Dillon has the Klan," Eric said. "It's kind of a small Klan though."

Tami shook her head. "You sure it wasn't just a few players from Arnett Meade? It's rivalry week, isn't it?"

Mo's mouth fell open. "Shit. She's right. Weird that they're targeting our _second_ string quarterback, though." Eric didn't mention that his touchdown had won the last game or that Coach was planning to start him this Friday. "I guess that means we've got to retaliate."

Scooter laughed. "Well, he kind of already did, if he beat one of them bloody."

"I didn't…that's not what happened," Eric insisted. "I just hosed him down. My dad didn't shoot anyone. My mom didn't light anyone on fire."

"Then we still need to get the assholes," Booker said.

"Absolutely," Mo insisted. "We'll give them a day to think they got away with it. Then Tuesday after practice, we go into action. You with us, Eric?"

"Uh…I've got to work. And they didn't look like football players. There were only _three_ of them. One was kind of skinny. And it's not like it's never happened before, the Klan targeting Catholics."

Tami slid off of Mo's lap and stood beside him, a hand on his shoulder. "Yeah," she said, "but you just won a football game. They aren't going to target you now. Not if they're from Dillon. And Arnett's quarterback is kind of skinny. He's fast, and he can jump, but he's not beefed up."

"Either way," Mo said, "we need to get Arnett. And you need to be in on it, Eric. So skip work tomorrow night."

"I need a milkshake," Tami said. Sometimes that was all she had for lunch – fries and a chocolate milkshake. She'd dip the fries in the milkshake. "We're still on for tutoring tomorrow morning before school?" she asked Eric as she passed him.

Eric nodded.

As she walked away, Mo pointed a finger at him, "You better keep your hands to yourself during these tutoring sessions."

"Yeah…uh…tutoring isn't really a hands-on sort of thing."

A bright flash of teeth crossed Mo's face. He cocked his head to one side and laughed - a warning laugh.

Eric laughed back, an I'm-uncomfortable-with-this-situation laugh. Then he took a long, slow swig of his milk.

**[Monday Night]**

The dealership closed at 8 on Monday, but Eric worked until 10. As he was waxing one of the showroom cars around 8:15, he watched his father let a pretty woman into the dealership and then lock the door. Mr. Taylor walked her to his office and shut the door behind them. Eric watched through the office window as his dad motioned for her to take a seat across from him. They were in there for almost twenty minutes, talking, and once the woman laughed. Then his dad laughed.

When they emerged, Eric pretended not to have been watching. He hoped to God his father wasn't having an affair. He couldn't believe he would be, not after what he'd said about honoring vows.

"Eric," his Dad said. "Please walk Mrs. Hayes back to her car. It's getting dark. She's going to start work with us next Monday as our new secretary."

"Oh," he said. So it had been an interview. Well that certainly made more sense than his strict Catholic father having an affair.

_Wait._ _Mrs. Hayes?_

"Are you Tami's mom?" he asked as he began to escort her toward the door.

"Yes, do you know my daughter?"

"Yes, ma'am. I'm her tutor."

"You're Eric?" When he nodded, she said, "She did mention you. She asked if she could stay out past curfew this Saturday for a tutoring session at the dealership."

"Yes, ma'am. My dad and I drive to and from work together on Saturdays." Usually Eric took his own pick-up because his dad was already at work, but not on Saturdays. "I'm done at 10, and my dad's done at 11." Eric usually read for that hour. "So I thought it would be a convenient time."

Mrs. Hayes looked him over. "And here I thought she was just trying to sneak out past curfew with Mo McArnold." She laughed. "You're really tutoring her?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Guess my suspicions about that McArnold boy were wrong. I feared they were secretly dating."

Eric kept his lips shut tight as he showed her to her car. Tami had told him that her mother sometimes held a ruler to her skirt before she went out to make sure it was an "appropriate length." She must not be privy to all the rumors about Tami that had swept Dillon high for the past three years, or a single secret boyfriend would be the least of her worries. He supposed adults moved in their own worlds. It certainly seemed to Eric that his father was in another world sometimes.

When they got to the door of her sedan, she paused. "Do you think my Tami really has a realistic chance of getting into college? I always felt bad that I never got after her about her grades. They just didn't seem that important to me after all her father put us through. I suppose you know who her father is. The whole town knows." Eric nodded, and she continued, "It just seemed more important to me that she was a virtuous girl, you know, than that she was a good student. Her father went to college for a semester. Didn't do him any good. But virtue…virtue you can take with you anywhere."

"I suppose so, ma'am." Eric thought it was strange that this woman was talking to him so freely. She had pleasant smile when she was spoke that made it hard not to like her, even if she was saying things he wasn't entirely sure he liked.

"I don't know much about college admissions, ma'am," he said, "but I think Tami has a realistic chance of bringing her grades up and doing well on her SAT's, anyway, if she sticks with what she's been doing."

"If she wants it, she'll stick with it." Mrs. Hayes opened her car door. "She's like a dog with a bone that, girl, when she gets a hold of something she wants. She don't let go."


	15. Getting Even

**[Tuesday Morning]**

Tami sat on the bleachers watching Eric finish up his private morning practice with Coach Hamilton. At the moment, they were both standing a couple of yards away, their heads bent, just talking. This conversation was really eating into her tutoring time.

Coach Hamilton let out a loud laugh and slapped Eric on the shoulder. Eric was smiling when he came over to get his gym bag. She'd never seen him smile like that – natural and gentle and…happy. He looked happy.

The smile faltered a little bit when he saw her. It wasn't that he looked unhappy to see her – he just look like he was stepping from a moment of tranquility back to an order of business. "I promise I'll make my shower quick," he said.

She watched him walk toward the locker room and wondered if he'd been one of those serious kids, the kind that is too old before his time and looks at adults with a puzzled brow when they're just trying to tease him, or if he'd been the friendly kid who would be your best friend if only he discovered you both had a similar interest in chocolate ice cream. She wondered who Eric Taylor had been before his sister died. She wondered who he was now. She wondered if he was starting to like her as a human being, or if she was some kind of obligation he was crossing off his list of penances. She wondered because, the truth was, she was beginning to like him as a person, notwithstanding his early slur. She was beginning to think that Eric Taylor, all and all, give and take a few idiosyncrasies, was an all right guy.

Later, as they sat at the picnic table and went over everything she'd missed on her last Algebra test, she said, "You're pretty smart for a jock. I don't know any other football players who are in Trig."

"Scooter's in Trig."

"But he's a senior."

"I'm not that smart. I just get good grades and do well on standardized tests."

"Isn't that the same thing?" she asked.

He laughed. "No. I mean, look at you. You're smart and you don't have great grades and I guess you bombed your SAT's last year if you're taking them again."

_He_ thought _she_ was smart? "I didn't take them last year. I didn't think I was going to apply for college. But clearly you're smart. You can't do well if you're not."

"Sure you can," he said. "I do well because I pay attention in class and I study hard. I don't even like it. The only subjects I like are History and Weight Lifting. I hate English. I mostly read the Cliff Notes."

"Don't you like math? I mean, you're in Trig, and you don't even have to take that."

He shrugged. "My dad wanted me to. He wants me to major in business, but I want to major in history or maybe phys ed. I didn't want to take Trig. I wanted to take another elective instead."

"I'm taking two electives. I hate Typing, but my mom wanted me to take it because she thinks I should be a secretary. I kind of like Psychology though. What would you take, if you weren't taking Trig?"

He leaned his elbows on the table. "Maybe Public Speaking."

She raised an eyebrow. "I took Public Speaking in junior high. I used to compete in speech contests."

"Really? So did I. But…they interfered with football so I had to quit. I like it 'cause…I don't know. I kind of have trouble talking to people one on one, like, you know, at a party, but I don't really have trouble giving speeches in front of a group. I'm kind of okay at that. I used to read Patrick Henry's 'Give me liberty or give me death' speech aloud alone in my room." He laughed but then the laugh faded, and he looked at her as though he was certain she was going to make fun of him.

She reassured him she wasn't by saying, "I did the same thing with Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech."

"How come you don't join the forensics team then? I mean, you don't play a sport. If you want to get into college, you should probably have some extracurricular."

"I don't play a sport," she said, "but I have a boyfriend on the football team. That takes almost as much time out of my life."

"Oh," he said. And then he took his elbows off the table, drew the book closer, and said, "So, 1/3X minus one…"

**[Tuesday Afternoon]**

After school, Tami popped her head into room 32-B. A group of about eight kids, who clearly knew each other well, sat talking. She didn't recognize any of them, except in passing. There was no adult in the room. She cleared her throat. They all stared at her at once. She felt like running away, but she didn't. "Um….is this…the forensics team meeting?"

"Yeah," one skinny boy said. He was staring straight at her chest as he answered. "Why?"

She stepped in the room. "I was kind of interested in joining. Is the sponsor here?"

Another boy, who was of a more normal weight, also spoke to her chest. "She's usually late. Try-outs were the second week of school."

A long, brown-haired girl smacked her gum. "Your Tami Hayes, aren't you?

"Yeah," Tami answered.

It seemed to her that they all laughed suddenly and in chorus. Then they just went back to talking to each other.

"Fuck it," she muttered as she left the room.

**[Tuesday Night]**

Eric told his father that he had to go over plays with Mo in preparation for Friday's big game against Arnett Meade and that he'd make up the work by coming in an hour early on Wednesday and Thursday.

"You can't make-up the work, Eric," his father said. "Cars need vacuuming. Floors need mopping. But go on ahead. I'll see it gets done. You need to win this game."

Mo's Mustang couldn't fit everybody, so they all met up after dinner in the Dillon High parking lot around Eric's pick-up to plan their rivalry week retaliation. Johnny McMann suggested breaking into the Arnett Tigers locker room and spray painting their lockers.

"No way man," Eric said. "Nah. I'm not doing any breaking and entering."

"Pussy," Johnny mumbled.

Scooter came to his defense. "Give 'em a break. I don't want anything serious on my record either if we get caught. I'm college bound. I'm getting out of this town." Scooter didn't have a football offer, but he had good grades, and he was expecting a minority scholarship to the University of Houston.

"Fine," Johnny said. "No breaking and entering. Let's just trash the quarterback's car. Get Joe Marshall's car. We know he was the ringleader. Eric said one of them was skinny. Let's slash his tires and break his windows."

"No way," Eric said.

"Pussy!" Johnny shouted. "Man, they burned a cross on your lawn. They woke up your mamma. Don't you want to defend your mamma's honor?"

It actually hadn't been so bad for his mother. She'd laughed. She'd laughed for the first time in….Eric couldn't remember how long. And she was going to get help now, too, although that probably had more to do with what Tami had said to her than with the cross burning. "Those jerks were just lucky my dad didn't shoot one of them," Eric said.

"You know, Joe Marshall works at the DQ in Arnett," Booker said. "Let's just grab him there, drag him into the bathroom, and give him a couple of good swirlies. We could even dress up as Black Panthers when we do it. They dress up as the Klan, we dress up as Panthers. Tit for tat."

"Weren't the Black Panthers dissolved last year?" asked Scooter.

"Who cares?" Booker asked. "Tit for tat, man."

Mo smiled. "I haven't given anyone a good swirly in almost a year. But I don't think Eric and Johnny and I are going to pass for Panthers. Not of the black variety, anyway."

"Wear masks and gloves," Booker said. "Black face around the eyes. Cover head to toe. Don't talk. They won't know."

Mo nodded. "All right. Let's do it."

Johnny turned to Eric. "You okay with that, pussy?"

Not really. He didn't mind a fight, but assaulting a guy while he was at work wasn't really Eric's thing. "Don't start. Finish." That's what Coach Hamilton had said. Then again, they _had_ started it, hadn't they, by burning that cross on _his_ lawn? It was just a swirly. No private property would be damaged, and there'd be no permanent injury. Eric couldn't keep saying no to everything they suggested. "I guess."

They drove hooting and hollering into the city of Arnett, and Joe Marshall was right where Scooter said he would be. Johnny, Eric, and Mo applied dark shoe polish around their eyes and mouth before putting their ski masks and gloves on.

It was five minutes until closing, and there were no customers in the place. Joe was behind the counter, wiping down the machines.

When they busted in and Joe Marshall said, "What the fuck?" Eric recognized his voice from Sunday night. Tami's guess had been correct.

Booker announced that they were Black Panthers come to retaliate against one of the secret members of the KKK.

It wasn't until a bit later that Eric remembered what he had said earlier that evening, that the fake klansmen were lucky his father hadn't shot them. The only reason he remembered saying it at all was because when they were in the bathroom, and Booker and Johnny and Mo had Joe Marshall's head in the toilet, and Eric had pulled the handle, and Charlie and Scooter were leaning against the sinks laughing, the manager of the DQ busted in with a shotgun.


	16. Remorse

**[Wednesday Afternoon]**

"Coach, can we _please_ stop," begged Scooter as he limped a few steps.

"No we cannot," Coach Hamilton barked. "We cannot stop these punting drills because I have not chosen a punter, because I did not think I would _need_ to choose a punter, because I did not expect my punter to be shot in the foot! We're going to do these drills until I identify my new punter. And then we're going to _keep_ doing them until somebody tells me what really happened last night!"

"Johnny McMann was cleaning his gun," Booker said. "It was an accident."

"Is that so, young man?" Coach Hamilton turned on Booker. "Is that so? Because it's rare to hear of an individual cleaning his shotgun while it's loaded and pointed at his foot. And I find it odd that when this _alleged_ accident occurred, the ER nearest to Johnny _happened_ to be two miles from Arnett Mead High!"

Eric, who'd had his eyes fixed on the ground, glanced at Mo, who gave him a look that said, "You talk, you die."

Every one of them had seen it happen differently. Every one of them thought the DQ manager had said something else before he shot, and every one of them thought they had dragged Johnny out of that bathroom in a different way. But they all agreed on one thing - Johnny had been screaming when they'd thrown him in the bed of Eric's pickup and when they dropped him in front of the Arnett ER before peeling off.

Eric had called the hospital this morning to check up on him. Johnny said they were going to have to reconstruct his big toe. Not wanting to get in trouble with his father for the whole incident, and not wanting to betray his football brothers, Johnny had told the hospital workers that he accidentally shot himself while cleaning his gun. Johnny was an ass, but he was a loyal ass.

The DQ manager, not wanting to get in trouble for shooting a kid, had never called the police. Joe Marshall wasn't talking about any of it either, maybe because the swirly was mortifying or maybe because he could be accused of trespass and arson on the Taylors' property.

"Anyone? Anyone have any information they'd like to share with me?" Coach asked. "Taylor? Can I rely on you to tell me what the hell went on last night?"

"I….I don't know….anything about anything. Sir."

"Whatever supposedly did _not_ happen last night?" Coach Hamilton said as he waved a finger across his players. "It's not _ever_ going to happen again. Rivalry week is _over_. It's _already_ over. Is that understood?"

"Yes, sir!" The team chorused.

"Good. Then let's resume these drills."

**[Wednesday Evening]**

The diner only had three customers at the moment, and they were all served and eating. Tami leaned with her elbows on the counter and kissed Mo. When she pulled back, she asked, "Did you get a black eye or something?"

"Nah," he said, rubbing under his eye. "The black shoe polish _still_ hasn't come all the way off. I don't know how Eric got it off. He must have scrubbed with a brillo pad."

"I think that would have left some scrapes under his eyes."

"How do you know it didn't?" Mo asked. "You spend a lot of time looking at his eyes?"

Tami stood up straight. "Of course not." The truth was that she _had_ snuck a few peeks during their last tutoring session, usually when Eric was looking off at something. She couldn't help it. Those eyes were just so...disarming. "How's Johnny?"

"He'll survive. He won't play for the rest of the season, but he'll survive. Eric said he'd stop by the hospital on his way to work today."

Eric was checking on him? That surprised Tami a little. Eric and Johnny didn't seem to get along at all. Johnny was _Mo's_ best friend. "Eric? Why not you?"

"I'll go. I'll go tomorrow. If they haven't released him."

"So who was the idiot who came up with this plan in the first place?" Tami asked.

"Booker. But it was Eric's fault."

Tami snorted. Mo sounded jealous of Eric. He was kind of cute when he was jealous. Well, not cute, exactly, but it was nice that he wasn't taking her for granted for a change. "How was it Eric's fault?"

"Because Johnny had one idea, and Prude McGude said no. Then Johnny had another idea, and Prude McGude said no _again_."

"Prude McGude? Did you spend a lot of time thinking that one up?"

"It fits," Mo insisted.

"It's not even a pun on his real name."

"Why are you defending him?"

Tami shrugged and grabbed her pad. "I'm not." She nodded toward the door, which had just jingled. "Got a customer. See you after the game Friday?"

"My mom's out at her Women's Bible study," he said. "My dad's working late again."

Mo's dad worked late a lot. Sometimes he worked so late he just "slept over at the office." Tami thought he was probably having an affair, but she kept that opinion to herself.

Mo reached over the counter and tugged on her apron string. "You provide excellent service. What say you come over to my house and service me?"

She smacked his hand away and retied the uniform. "I don't get off until nine. And I have a Government test tomorrow I need to study for."

"Since when have you picked studying over fun?"

"Since now." She tucked her pencil behind her ear and left him sitting there, a frown on his face. She used to think his pouting face was cute. Tonight, it just annoyed her.

**[FNL]**

Johnny's foot was elevated and he was watching the evening news when Eric stepped through the hospital room door.

"Hey," Eric said. "I brought you a _Sports Illustrated_ and a Reeses." Johnny was notorious for his consumption of peanut butter cups. Eric put them on the bedside tray that had been pushed aside.

"What are _you_ doing here?" Johnny asked.

Eric eased into the chair by his bedside. "Just…uh….you know." He scratched the back of his neck. "Checking up on you. See if you need anything."

"I need a new plan is what I need. I can't play football anymore."

Johnny wasn't really relying on football for anything, was he? He was an okay high school punter, but like Coach Hamilton kept reminding them all, less than six percent of high school players ever went on to play college ball. Johnny wasn't on anyone's radar.

"Yeah," Eric said. "That really, really sucks. I'm sorry, man."

"You should be. It's your damn fault. If we had just broken into the locker room like I suggested, or slashed Marshall's tires, none of this would have happened."

"Or if we just hadn't done _any_ of it," Eric said.

Johnny grabbed the Reeses and ripped it open. He peeled the brown wrap off and shoved one cup almost whole in his mouth. He chewed it viciously, staring at Eric as he did so, until the last bit was gone.

"Man, I'm really sorry," Eric said.

Johnny swallowed. He reached for a large cup of water by his bedside and rinsed the Reeses down.

"Really sorry."

Johnny put the cup back on the table. "You know what, Taylor? You're the only one who called the next morning to make sure I was even alive."

Well, everyone knew he was alive. It wasn't as if he'd been shot in the chest.

"And you're the first person on the team to come visit me. And you don't even like me." Johnny reached for the other Reese's cup. As he peeled the paper, he said, "You're a strange guy, Taylor. You're just weird." He broke the cup in half. "You can go now. Tell Mo he doesn't have to worry about me ratting anyone out. "

Eric nodded and stood.

**[Friday] **

Friday night's big game against Arnett Meade was a bit of a setback for the Panthers. The replacement punter was a mess. Eric, who was allowed to start, didn't do much better. He felt so guilty for what had happened Tuesday night that he couldn't concentrate. What if someone had actually gotten killed?

Coach eventually pulled Eric and put in Mo. The score improved, and they were down only slightly with just a little time left in the game when Coach Hamilton called a hail mary play.

It didn't work. The Panthers lost.

**[Saturday Morning]**

"Bless me father for I have sinned. It has been a week since my last confession." In the confessional, Eric told his priest about giving Joe Marshall the swirly and Johnny getting shot.

"What's done has been done," the priest said. "You can't undo the damage. But in the future, consider that our Lord has instructed us _not_ to repay evil with evil, put to repay evil with good. You must cultivate your ability to turn the other cheek."

"It's…it's hard not to…you know…go along."

"Be _**in**_ the world, my son, but not _**of**_ the world."

"Yes, father."

Eric said the Act of Contrition.

After he had assigned Eric's penance, the priest asked, "What was with that play Coach Hamilton called yesterday?"

"I don't know."

Coach's plays sometimes didn't make sense to Eric, but that was only when they didn't work. He would look back a week later and see what the man was _trying_ to do. Eric might have done it differently, but then again he wasn't Coach. And when he listened to sports radio as he and his father drove home from church, he was glad he wasn't.

He'd hate to be under a constant magnifying glass like that, to come home to a jungle of toilet paper on his lawn after every loss. Coach was king of the town when he won, but these people were more fickle in their affections than the Greek gods Eric had been forced to read about this year in _Bullfinch's Mythology_. He would never want to be a high school football coach.

Eric hoped he was going to be a professional football player, for a while at least. If he couldn't do that, maybe he'd become a sports announcer. He certainly wasn't ever going to deal with high school kids like Johnny McMann in a backwoods town like Dillon. That was for sure.


	17. Tutoring Tami

**Chapter Seventeen**

**[Saturday Night]**

As Eric was finishing up emptying the waste basket in the last sales room, the pounding started on the side door of the dealership. The individual office lights had been turned off except for his dad's manager's office and this one sales room, but the showroom lights were still at full blast. He put down the can and hastened to let Tami in. When she stepped inside and glanced all around the show room, her eyes twinkled, almost as if they were smiling. It made him smile, the innocent, girlish way she took in the sparkling cars. He locked the door behind her and said, "We can use that room down there. My dad'll be working for a while."

As if on cue, Eric's dad stepped out of his office, waved in her direction, and called, "Good evening, Ms. Hayes."

"Evening, Mr. Taylor."

But then he went back into his office and shut the door.

Tami was now running a hand over the shiny hood of a brand new Pontiac Firebird. "You get to drive the cars?"

"I guess. If I wanted. I mean, if I had time." God she was beautiful. He'd never noticed that before. He'd noticed she was _hot_, of course - what red-blooded teenage boy hadn't? But he hadn't noticed she was _beautiful_. Maybe it was the lighting in the showroom. Maybe it was the sincere, pleased smile that had eclipsed her usual smirk. Maybe it was the way she'd curled her hair this evening. Or maybe it was just that he'd gotten to know her a little better, but…she was _beautiful_. "So…uh….we can use this room over here…" He walked toward the sales room he'd left open and Tami followed.

There were two chairs, and he sat on the one behind the desk, but instead of sitting in the one across from it, she sat on the desk itself, her long, blue-jean-clad legs dangling off the edge. She picked up one of the framed photographs. "Is this Buddy Garrity's fiancé?"

"Yeah."

"She's pretty."

He almost said, "Not compared to you," but he caught himself. "I guess."

They worked through some practice SAT math problems. Tami had a lot of trouble with the geometry ones. Eric resisted asking her how she'd manage to pass the class last year. He knew how easy it was for him to get a C+ last year in English, after all, without ever having read a single assigned novel. It wasn't that he didn't read books. He just didn't read fiction, and certainly not fiction that was written as if it was intended to torture a guy. He'd tried to read _A Tale of Two Cities_ last year, but the first sentence just would not end. He didn't even reached the period before he gave up.

"So, you haven't told your mom you're dating Mo?" he asked. "Even though you guys have been together since before the summer?"

Tami looked up from the sample problem she was working. "I told you. She's a religious nut. She thinks I'm going straight to hell if I even look at a guy wrong. I certainly don't need her worrying about me dating a football player. Because, as we all know, football players are the worst offenders."

"Not all of us," Eric said. "She didn't seem like such a religious nut when I met her. She didn't quote the Bible or anything."

"You didn't tell her I was dating Mo, did you?"

"No! I think she knows anyway, but I kept your little secret. I'm not trying to get you in trouble, unlike some people I know." He was thinking of her little prank that Friday night he was drunk, when she'd dropped him off at home with a holler and a bang.

"In _retrospect_," (retrospect was one of the SAT words they'd reviewed at the end of last session), "I shouldn't have done that to you. I'm sorry." She laughed and covered her mouth. "I'm sorry. Really, I am, but you should have seen your face when I slammed that door. And trust me, my mom _is_ a religious nut. She goes to church three times a week – Wednesday night and twice on Sundays. At least she only makes me go Sunday morning."

"I go to church three times a week," Eric said defensively. "Does that make _me_ a religious nut? My dad goes six or seven times a week."

"Seven times? _Really?_" When Eric nodded, she continued, "Well, that's different. You're Catholic. And you just go because your dad makes you, right?"

Eric leaned back in Buddy's chair. It had a little give to it that let him bounce. "I guess."

"As soon as I'm out of my mom's house, I'm never going to church again. Are you?"

"I don't know. I might. Not three times a week, certainly, but I _might_ go."

"Well I'm not," she said, crossing her legs at the knee. "And even if I did, I would never make my children go. I would leave the choice totally up to them."

"Really?" He scooted the chair forward and leaned on the desk. "I bet you wouldn't. You're just saying that because you don't want to go. But if you _did_ want to go, I bet you'd want your kids to go."

"I wouldn't care at all," Tami insisted.

"Nah. You're just saying that because you don't believe in God or any of it."

"Oh, I totally believe in God," she said. "Don't you?"

No one had ever asked him directly like that before. "I…I guess."

"I just don't like church." Tami brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. She had interesting hair. What color was that? It wasn't red, certainly, but it wasn't really blond either. It was just awfully pretty, whatever it was. "Do _you_ like church?" she asked.

He shrugged. "I dunno. It's a way to be with your family. I wish my mom still went with us. And even though it can be boring, sometimes…I don't know. I feel…different after? Better? Like…like maybe there's more to it?"

"To what?"

He looked around the sales room, at all the 'Salesman of the Month' plaques adorning Buddy's walls. "To life. More than plaques and trophies and State rings and college diplomas and test scores. I mean…sometimes I feel like that when I'm playing football too. When I'm in the moment. But then the local newspaper does some story, or the radio starts talking about it, and I think….it's not about the game. It's about the score."

Tami raised an eyebrow.

"Don't get me wrong. I love winning. I don't play to lose. I don't think it would be any fun without the competition and the rivalry and all that. I just…" He sighed. "I just wish sometimes it wasn't so important to everyone. Because then that way maybe it could be _more_ important. It could be about what it's really about."

"Which is?" she asked.

"Pushing yourself to your limits. Pushing your teammates to theirs. Being tested and – whether you win or lose – coming out stronger." God he sounded like an idiot. Why was he prattling on like this to her? She was going to laugh at him with Mo tomorrow.

She leaned her head on one hand and looked at him. She was studying him quietly. Was she looking for a smart ass come back? "I can see that," she said. "But it takes a good coach to bring that out in the players. You ever think about becoming a high school football coach?"

He laced his fingers together. He shook his head slightly, "Nah," he said. "Nah. I'm going to be a sports announcer. Maybe after I retire from the NFL."

She snorted. "Do you know what percentage of high school players make it to the NFL?"

"Do you know what percentage of students who start their senior year with a 2.0 end up going to college?"

She slapped her pencil down on the book and stared off with irritation at the empty wastebasket.

"Sorry," he hastened. "Sorry, I didn't mean to…I'm just saying – we both have dreams."

She looked back at him. "You really think my dream is _that_ unrealistic?"

"Well….no…because I don't think _mine's_ that unrealistic either. My dad was in the AFL. He expects me to…you know…play professional football."

"Oh. Okay." She smiled. He'd apparently been forgiven. "Well, the sports announcer part isn't unrealistic, anyway. You have a good voice for that. But it's not a very inspiring job, is it?"

"It's a paycheck," he said. "And I'd get to watch football for a living. Why? What _inspiring_ job do you plan to do?"

She shrugged. "I have no idea. The only subject I really like this year is psychology."

"So…be a psychologist or a counselor or something like that. Seems obvious to me."

"Well," she said, picking back up her pencil, "it seems obvious to me you should be a teacher. Now teach."


	18. The Trouble With Conscience

**Chapter Eighteen**

**[Sunday Evening]**

When Tami came to the Taylor house for her tutoring session with Eric the next evening, Mrs. Taylor brought them a plate of warm cookies and set it on the coffee table just as they were sitting down on the living room floor.

"Thank you, Mrs. Taylor," Tami said. She bit it into one. It tasted incredibly salty. "They're really good," she lied. Mrs. Taylor looked at her expectantly, so she took another generous bite and murmured, "Mhmmm!"

Mrs. Taylor smiled and returned to the kitchen. When she was out of sight, Tami waved a hand over her mouth and said, "Water, water, water."

Eric ran to get her a glass, and she washed the salty mess down. While she did so, he picked up a cookie and sniffed. Then he took a tiny bite. He grimaced and set the cookie back onto the plate. "Sorry," he said. "She gets distracted sometimes. She probably confused the salt for the sugar."

Tami reached into her backpack and pulled out her Chemistry book. "I think I'm caught up with math, at least until the next test. Think you could help me with Chemistry? Didn't you take it last year?" She knew he wasn't taking science this year, which must mean he'd already done biology and chemistry and would be taking physics his senior year.

He nodded. "It uses some algebra, so….it should make more sense to you now."

She opened the book and found her place, and when she looked up from it, he was staring at her strangely. "What?" she asked. "Do I have something on my face?" She touched a cheek with one hand.

"Nah," he said. "Nah, I was just thinking…that was really nice of you. To pretend to like my mom's cookies. I don't think I could have choked that much down."

She shrugged. "Well, I don't have to choke it down every day like you do."

"Well, she never bakes, except for you apparently. She does okay with her cooking half the time. And she only cooks two days a week, so…"

"What do you do the other five days? Eat out?" Mr. Taylor must make a boatload managing that dealership. Her family ate out once a month, and it was big special occasion when they did.

"Nah. Sometimes we get pizza or take out, but most of the time my dad and I cook."

She snorted. Then she saw his face. "Oh…you're serious. What do you cook?"

"I make a mean chili," he said with a smile. He was surprisingly cute when he smiled. "And I do breakfast for dinner, you know, pancakes and bacon. My dad does steak and potatoes and vegetables. And he makes spaghetti. He makes his own sauce from scratch. It's not bad."

"Really?"

"Well, we're Italian you know. You can tell by the name."

She laughed. He had a gentle sense of humor, so different from Mo's openly bawdy one. She liked a good bawdy laugh from time to time, but it got old after a while, when it wasn't done sparingly, and Mo was anything but sparing. "No. I think your people are probably better known for fish and kippers. What was your sister's favorite food?"

He blinked. Maybe she shouldn't have tried that. She thought maybe he wanted to talk about Debbie more, but he just didn't know how. So she'd tried to give him an opening. But now he just looked stunned.

She was about to say _nevermind_ when he spoke. "Black olives." He laughed. "Can you imagine that? An eleven-year-old kid, eating them straight out of the can like they were candy."

Tami smiled. "So she was as weird as you?"

"Oh, way weirder, trust me." He smiled. Then he rapped his pen on the Chemistry book. "We should probably get down to this. You don't have long to pull up your grades."

When she was packing up later, he said, "You know, my mom started going to that Women's Center you told her about. She has another counseling session lined up. And they've referred her to a doctor that's going to prescribe her something."

"That's great."

"So…uh…thanks?"

Tami slung her backpack over her shoulder. "So…uh….you're welcome?"

He smiled and looked at his shoes.

**[Tuesday Morning]**

"You did a god awful job on Friday, Eric." Coach Hamilton was standing next to him on the football field. It was 5:38 in the morning. Eric hung his head.

"Now I'm not scolding you, young man, and I'm certainly not telling you anything you don't already know, but I am asking – why?"

Eric's shoulders rose to his ears. "I dunno. Sir."

Coach Hamilton put the tip of the football under his chin and raised his head. "I think I do. I think you were involved with whatever got Johnny McMann shot. And I think you were distracted Friday because you were feeling guilty. Young man, I think what you have - I think the obstacle that besets you - is what is commonly called a conscience."

Eric looked off at the field goal.

Coach Hamilton tossed the football up and then caught it. "And that conscience is probably going to be an inconvenience for the rest of your life."

"You…you think I shouldn't care? About…things?"

"That's not what I said. That's not what I meant. It's just… it's not always easy being a good guy in a broken world. You've got to learn how to succeed in that world without conforming to that world."

Funny. That was something like what Eric's priest had said. "But…how?"

"Young man, if I knew that, I'd be writing self-help books, not coaching football. You'll figure it out. You know how I know you'll figure it out?"

"No, sir."

Coach tapped his own forehead with the football. "I've got a sixth sense about these things." Then he tapped Eric's shoulder with the football. "Now run out ninety yards."

**[FNL]**

When Eric arrived for their morning session, Tami was sitting on top of the picnic table, smiling and shaking her head as she read a sheet of notebook paper. She folded up the paper and tucked it in the back pocket of her jeans.

"What was that?" he asked. He wasn't being intentionally nosy, but he was curious what sort of things made her smile.

"A love note," she said, "from Mo."

Eric didn't know why that response made him feel so tense, but it did. "He writes you love notes? Mo?"

"Sure. Why not? I'm his girlfriend, aren't I? Haven't you ever written a girl a love note?"

He shook his head. "I'm not a romantic sort of guy."

"Well, neither is Mo really. Except when he wants to be." She slid off the picnic table and sat on the bench. "And when he hasn't gotten laid in a while, he wants to be. At least he makes the effort. That's more than I can say for my first two boyfriends." She cocked her head to the side and studied him.

"What?" he asked.

"You missed a button." His hand shot to his button fly jeans, and she laughed. "I mean on your shirt."

He saw what she meant and began to fix it. It felt like she was still watching him, but when he looked up, she had her Chemistry book open and her notes out.


	19. QB1

**Chapter Nineteen**

**[Friday Night]**

Buddy Garrity shook his head and grumbled, "Coach Hamilton _cannot_ be starting Eric again."

Tami, who was in the bleachers to his left, wondered how Buddy could say that when he was standing right next to Mr. Taylor.

"After the way he played last Friday?" Buddy turned to Tami as if looking for an echo, but she just shrugged.

Mr. Taylor grabbed the railing tensely and leaned forward.

Buddy was so disturbed by coach's decision that even after the kick off, he turned away from the game to complain to Tami. "I mean, really?" he said. "You go and give the starting position to – "

Tami pointed to the field. "You're missing something."

Buddy turned his attention back to the game. "Holy…! What? How'd did Eric – when did – Go! Go! Go! Go! Go!"

**[FNL]**

After the game, Tami sat reclined against Mo before a campfire they'd lit on Scooter's family farm. The Texas sky opened up in a brilliant canopy above them all. Several other team members and their girlfriends – or girls who _wanted_ to be their girlfriends - were hanging out too. It was a fairly quiet victory celebration.

Eric sat cross-legged, his half full beer bottle on the ground beside him. He was drawing a play diagram with a stick on the earth. One of the cheerleaders – Tami thought her name might be Beth - crouched down beside him and congratulated him on his performance. Beth was leaning forward just enough to reveal some serious cleavage. Tami knew that trick well enough, though she hadn't felt the need for it lately.

Eric muttered something in response to the cheerleader that Tami couldn't make out. Then the cheerleader said something about needing to go home early but being afraid because it was dark. Eric, barely making eye contact, offered her a mini flashlight he pulled out of his back pocket. Dumbfounded, she held it in her hand and looked at him. "Whatever," she said, and stood up and left.

Mo laughed. He cupped a hand over his mouth and called, "Earth to Eric."

Eric looked up from his stick drawing.

"Man," Mo said, "did you really not see that chick was asking you to walk her to her car?"

"Yeah," Johnny McMann agreed. Even though he wasn't playing anymore, he was still hanging out with the team. His crutches rested on the ground beside him. He couldn't put pressure on his foot for another two weeks. "Probably so she could invite you _into_ that car, probably so she could give you a _much needed_ hand job."

Eric turned and looked over his shoulder. He shook his head as he turned back. "I don't even hardly know her."

"So?" Johnny asked.

"So….I don't have any reason to like her."

"Dude," Johnny said, "You don't _have_ to _like_ her. Did you see those tits?"

"Hey, hey, hey!" Mo pointed to Tami. "There's a lady present."

Eric stood up. He hadn't even finished his beer. "I'm going inside."

Scooter and a couple of other guys had gone in the house to play poker in the light of the kitchen. Scooter's parents were dead asleep, because they'd be up at rooster's crow tomorrow. He claimed they could sleep through anything, but the party had remained a safe distance from the house just in case. Besides, Scooter wasn't allowing any beer inside the house.

Tami watched Eric walk toward the house with his hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans.

"He has _got_ to be gay," Johnny said. "Don't you think?" He nodded toward Mo. "Total faggot, right?"

"I might think so," Mo said, "If I didn't think he had the hots for my girl."

"What?" Tami pulled away from Mo and narrowed her eyes at him. "That is ridiculous. What are you talking about?"

"I've seen the way he looks at you. I'm not an idiot."

"Mo, that's totally ridiculous. Eric is no more interested in me than he was in that cheerleader." This jealousy thing was starting to go from flattering to silly.

Mo shook his head. "Hey, whatever you want to believe, baby cakes. I'm not worried, anyway. I know I can trust you. And Eric's not so stupid as to actually _try_ to move in on my territory."

"Territory? I'm your territory now am I?"

"Oooooh…" Johnny said, raising a beer bottle half to his lips. "This is going to be fun to watch."

"Oh, Tami's just playing," Mo said. "She loves it when I get territorial. It turns her on."

Mo wasn't entirely wrong. She _used_ to like to feel protected by him, guarded, claimed. Her first two boyfriends hadn't been interested in going steady. Mo had made her feel valuable after she'd been discarded. Lately, though, the whole possessive thing wasn't as attractive as it used to be. "Get me another beer," she ordered.

"Aren't you driving me home tonight?" Mo asked.

Tami was adamant that Mo not drive drunk. It was one of the few thou-shalt-not-cross lines she'd drawn in their relationship. Her father had done it too often. "No," she said, "_you're_ driving _me_ home tonight. And if you expect to be forgiven for your ridiculousness, you'll stop drinking now so you can."

Mo laughed. "A'right, then. If that's what it takes." He picked up his half empty beer bottle, turned it upside down, and let the liquid fall fizzing into the ground.

"Man," Johnny complained, "I could have drunk that."

A half hour later, Tami went into the house to use the bathroom. She went in through the kitchen door and saw Eric shaking his head and Scooter laughing as he pulled a pile of poker chips toward himself across the kitchen table. All four of the guys looked up at her. Eric and Scooter she knew, but the other two weren't football players. They were just friends of Scooter's.

"Powder room?" she asked in a mock, formal voice.

Scooter smiled. He was such a big guy, that the kitchen chair he was sitting on looked almost like a preschool chair. "Through the living room, down the hall, first door on the left." Then he began dealing cards.

When she came back, she stood behind Eric and glanced at his cards. He had nothing at all worth betting on, not even a pair. "How do you play this game?" she asked innocently, peering over his shoulder obviously. "Is it bad to have all one suit?"

"Oh damn," Scooter said, and threw his cards face down on the table. "I fold." The other two guys folded also.

Eric looked up at her, smiled, and then put his cards face down on the table. He pulled the chips to himself.

As she put her hand on the knob of the kitchen door, Tami said, "Don't worry about what Johnny said, Eric. He's an ass."

"And that," Scooter said, "wins the award for understatement of the year."

Eric chuckled. He started dealing.

"You want to play with us, Tami?" Scooter asked. "I can teach you."

Tami liked Scooter. He was one of five guys on the football team who had never obviously hit on her. Eric, of course, was another. She guessed it was no surprise they seemed to have become friends. Her mother always told her, "You can tell a man's character by the company he keeps."

Then why was Mo friends with Johnny? Mo wasn't an ass. Not _usually_. Certainly not like _Johnny_.

"Thanks, boys," she said, "but I promised Mo I'd be right back. He's a little jealous of Eric."

"Eric?" Scooter asked and laughed a deep, belly laugh.

"I know. Ridiculous, right?" She opened the door and stepped outside. She didn't even notice Eric wasn't laughing along with Scooter.

When she got back to Mo, Eric's rally girl, Mary Ellen, was chatting him up. "I think you took my spot," Tami said tensely.

"Oh, sorry!" Mary Ellen's words spilled out like bubbles. She stood up. "Where's Eric?" she asked. "He never thanked me for the panties I left in his locker this morning." For some reason, Mary Ellen was looking at Mo as she said it.

"Forget about it," Johnny McMann said. "Eric's gay. Come sit next to me." He patted the log he was leaning against.

Mary Ellen glanced at Mo, who shrugged. Then she looked at Johnny. "Umm….I think I'm going to go find Charlie."

"Oooh….burn," Mo said to Johnny when Mary Ellen had tripped off.

Johnny shrugged and sipped his beer.

By now Tami had sat down next to Mo again.

"You have a little chat with Eric while you were inside?" Mo asked her.

"I did. Don't be a possessive jerk about it. He has to tutor me, you know. If anyone should be territorial- " She nodded her head in the direction Mary Ellen had gone – "It should be me. She's _always_ flirting with you."

"Ah, Mary Ellen's no threat," Mo said. "Why would I be interested in a girl like her when I've got a _real_ woman like you?" He winked.

Tami laughed, even though she was still a little annoyed with him. He handed her a beer and she settled into place against him.


	20. A Useful Charity Case

**Chapter Twenty**

**[October]**

Coach Hamilton kept starting Eric. Mo shrugged it off: "He's just being nice and giving you a chance. He's only doing it because I've already got my scholarship, not because you're a better player."

"Except that he kind of is a better player," Scooter said.

"What do you know?" Jonny McMann asked. "You're not getting any offers. You'll never play college ball."

"He got an offer all right," Eric said. "Early admission to University of Houston. Full_ academic _scholarship."

"Because he's black," Johnny retorted. "Ooooh! What an accomplishment!"

"Because he has a 3.8," Eric insisted. "And because he got 1290 on his SAT's last year."

"_And_ because I'm black," Scooter said. "Beautifully, deliciously, scrumptiously black. Watch out college ladies."

**[November]**

Mrs. Taylor put the basket of hot rolls on the table and sat down. The counseling was helping her, as was the medicine, but she still had her bad spells.

After Mr. Taylor said grace, plates were filled. "Son," he asked, "shouldn't you have gotten your first quarter report card today?"

Eric rubbed the palm of his hand against the napkin on his knee. "Uh…yeah…"

"Why don't you go get that for me?"

Eric stood up and fished in the backpack he'd left on the kitchen desk. He handed the report card to his father and sat down again.

His father scanned the grades in ominous silence before saying, "This is unacceptable. You only have two A's this quarter." Those would be in P.E. and U.S. History. "A C+ in English? I thought we agreed that was _never_ going to happen again. Didn't we agree to that, son?"

"Yes, sir," Eric mumbled.

"Everything else is a B. Even Trigonometry is a B. Math has always been your best academic subject." _No._ History had always been his best subject. "What happened in Trigonometry?"

"I don't know," Eric spluttered. "It's really hard is all."

"You're fully capable of doing hard things." His father let the report card fall to the table and shook his head. "I think you've been spending too much time tutoring that Hayes girl and not enough time concentrating on your own studies."

"Dad…no! That's not why - "

"- I think it _is_ why, son. I'm going to have to ask you to scale back that…extracurricular."

Eric didn't want to give up his three times a week with Tami. He looked forward to those sessions. He counted down the days and hours that led to them. Tami was funny and clever in a non-pretentious way, not to mention beautiful. She got him to talk about his sister, too, a little bit here, a little bit there.

"James," Eric's mom insisted. "Come now. He's just trying to do a good deed. Tami wants to improve herself." She smiled. "Remember that semester I spent tutoring you in Spanish?"

The stern line of Mr. Taylor's lips shifted. He looked at Eric's mother fondly. "I do remember. Which is precisely why I think it isn't the best idea. Your nursing school grades slipped that semester."

"Well, I think those sessions were very profitable for _us_," Eric's mom said with a twinkle in her eye.

Mr. Taylor chuckled.

It was nice to see his parents smiling at each other, actually _flirting_ with each other. Three years ago it mortified Eric whenever it happened. Now, however, their affection was a welcome ray of sunshine in what had been an overcast house.

Mom stretched her hand out and put it on top of Dad's. "Let Eric help the girl."

Dad laced his fingers through Mom's. "But this is a different sort of thing, my love. I think this girl already has a boyfriend, and she's not Eric's type anyway. He likes quiet, unassuming girls."

Eric's mom snorted. She took her hand away and covered her mouth.

"What?" his father asked. "He does. That girl he dated in 8th and 9th grade? She was sweet and respectful. She wasn't the least bit assertive."

"Which is why she was useless for him. When Debbie died – "

Mr. Taylor's jaw clinched.

"We can say her name, James. _I'm_ going to say it."

Dad looked off at the stove.

"Anyway," Mom said. "_I_ like her. _I_ like Tami. She speaks her mind in a way I wish I could sometimes. And I think Eric should help her realize her dreams, because she could you know. She's been hamstrung by that father of hers and his reputation, but that's not fair. You of all people, James, should know how unfair that is."

Mr. Taylor tensed. Eric didn't know what his mom was talking about. He'd never known his grandfather on his father's side.

"I…" Eric spoke up hesitantly. "I think Mom's right. Tami could really use my help, Dad. She got an A on her last Algebra test."

"Then you've helped her."

"There's still the SAT's in March."

His mom backed him up: "The SAT's are extremely important, James."

Mr. Taylor drummed his fingers on the tablecloth. "Well, apparently I'm out voted." He picked up his fork and resumed eating.

**[*]**

Tami waited until she was alone in her room to open her first quarter report card. She was sitting on her bed, legs crossed, Depeche Mode's third album playing in her cassette deck. She glanced over each subject line and willed the tears to stay checked.

English C+

Psychology B

Algebra II B-

Government C+

Chemistry C+

Typing B-

She balled up the report card and threw it in the trash. After stomping to the kitchen, she picked up the receiver of the wall phone. It took her forever to dial Eric's number. She didn't know why her mom still hadn't bothered to buy a push button phone. The wheel whirred as she let go of the last number.

Mrs. Taylor answered. "Oh, yes, honey, he's here, I'll get him for you."

When Eric came on the line, Tami said, "Forget the tutoring. You don't have to bother with that anymore."

"Uh…why?" he asked. "We've barely started on the SAT stuff."

"It's useless. The only solid B I got was in Psychology. I'm not going to be able to do this."

"Tami…you only started trying in mid-September, after you'd already failed some tests. You only had a few weeks to pull up your grades. It just didn't balance out the stuff from before yet. You'll do a lot better next quarter."

"But I need a 3.4 for the year."

"There's three quarters left."

"- This was a stupid idea!" she shouted. She slumped against the counter. "I just wasted your time."

"You're….Tami, you're not a waste of my time. You're a good use of my time." His voice was soft, humble but sure.

"Well, not as good a use as football."

"I love football," he said.

"I know you do."

"But I…helping you makes me feel good. It makes feel…better than I've felt in a while."

"I'm a useful charity case, huh?"

"Hah."

She liked this laugh of his: the cute, uneasy breath of air that always escaped him when he didn't quite know what to say. And the truth was, she enjoyed spending time with him. She guessed it wouldn't hurt to continue the tutoring. Maybe she wouldn't get into college, but maybe she'd feel a little better about herself by the time she graduated. "Okay," she said. "We'll keep at it."

**[December] **

The Panthers made it to the State Semifinals that season, with all the fanfare that entailed, but they didn't win. Christmas came and went. Eric's father got his mother a pretty, dark red, silk bathrobe. She gave him a humidifier for his cigars, the man's only acknowledged vice. From his father, Eric received a Longhorns sweatshirt and cap. It was pretty clear where he was expected to go to college.

**[January]**

Snow came to Dillon, mixed with ice and heavy sleet, a painful concoction that lasted only until the afternoon sun came out, but still kids could be found sledding on hills – or what passed for a hill – using cardboard boxes and laundry baskets. Eric saw at least one kid who had torn down a For Sale sign to turn into a makeshift sled.

He continued to tutor Tami three times a week. Eric was impressed by the way she had thrown herself into improving her grades. She increasingly needed less and less of his help, and they began to spend more and more time just talking and laughing together. When she was bent over a book, he would find himself staring at her, and, at least once, she caught him looking. He told her she had something on her nose, and she rubbed at it until he assured her the imaginary blight was gone.

**[Friday Morning]**

This time Tami didn't wait until she was alone in her bed to tear open her report card. She did it as soon as she got out of home room. She walked down the hall scanning the report:

English B+

Psychology A+

Algebra II A

Government B+

Chemistry B+

Typing A

She smiled as she made her way to Mo's locker. He was talking to that girl again – Mary Ellen. Mary Ellen's flirtatiousness might have bothered Tami more if she wasn't so excited.

"Look!" she said proudly, as she walked right past Mary Ellen and held up the report card to Mo.

"Later," Mary Ellen said as she turned and sashayed down the hall.

Mo looked at the paper. "Not bad, baby cakes." He put an arm around Tami's waist and pulled her close. He kissed her cheek and she squirmed away.

"I could actually do it," she said, her eyes raking over the grades again. "I could actually get into college."

"Like, one of those open admission community colleges?" Mo asked.

"No. Like a four-year college."

"Okay," he said.

He leaned in to kiss her but she pulled back. "Maybe we should go out and celebrate. It's Friday after all." Friday and no football. Part of her missed the season when it was over – the thrill of having something to root for – but part of her liked that the town had to find something else to revolve around for a while.

"Celebrate what?" he asked. "Oh shit. It's not our one year anniversary is it? I swear, I didn't forget." He smiled. "I got you something for it. I'll just have to give it to you tomorrow."

She rolled her eyes. "Our anniversary will be in April. I mean celebrate my report card, of course, idiot. What do you say?"

"I say…that's a great idea. But I can't tonight."

"Why not?"

"I already promised Charlie and Johnny and them I'd do something with them."

"Well…" she folded the report card and shoved it in her jeans pocket. "We can all go together I guess."

"Welll….but….it's guy stuff. It'll just bore you. We'll go out another time." He tilted her chin up and kissed her. "You understand, right?"

"Sure," she muttered.

Tami didn't pay close attention in her next class. She started to wonder – what was the point? So she'd gotten better grades this quarter. It wasn't as if she'd won the lotto or something.

She was feeling a little low when she walked to her locker and shoved her books inside. As she shut it, a shoulder came down on the locker next to hers. "You get your report card?" Eric asked.

She shrugged. "Yeah."

"Well…how'd you do?"

"Better."

"Let me see," he insisted.

She dug in her pocket and pulled it out. He unfolded it and scanned the page and laughed his happy laugh. "This is awesome, Tami! You almost have straight A's!"

"Half _aren't_ A's."

"Because half are B+'s, which is _almost_ an A. This is great! Congratulations!" He grabbed her around the waist and lifted her up and twirled her. The report card fluttered to the tile floor. He stopped abruptly and set her back down on her feet as though he'd suddenly realized what he was doing. He stooped to recover the report card from the ground and handed it back to her.

She started to feel proud of herself again. "I did do pretty damn good, didn't I?"

His smile was infectious. "You sure did. So…where is Mo taking you to celebrate?"

"Uh…" She shrugged. "We're not really…it's not really something you celebrate."

"Sure it is."

"Well, he's busy tonight."

"With what?"

"He just is!" She didn't mean to sound so irritated.

"Okay then."

She studied him. "Why don't you and I go out to celebrate?"

"Uh….I'm not sure how Mo would feel about that."

"He's fine with you tutoring me."

"_Maybe_, but….going out…and tutoring…are kind of….different things."

She pushed him gently on a shoulder. "Not like a date, idiot. I'm not asking you on a date. I _have_ a boyfriend. Just a celebration. As student and tutor. As friends."

Eric crossed his arms over his chest. He had three chest-crossing postures – irritated, attentive, and nervous. This was the nervous one.

"Please?" she asked.

"Where do you want to go?"


	21. Celebration

**Chapter Twenty-One**

**[Friday Evening]**

Tami probably could have suggested anything and Eric would have said yes. She could have said she wanted to go to a knitting circle and – hell - he'd have gone just to be with her, just to look at her smiling, just to make her happy, just to let her know that he was proud of her for what she'd worked so hard to accomplish. He'd have gone anywhere, done anything, but – Jesus – roller skating? Really?

"What?" she'd asked when he'd hemmed and hawed about the suggestion. "Afraid you'll embarrass yourself?"

More like humiliate himself. And in front of _her_.

But he went. The rink was about fifteen miles away, in the town of North Dillon. They had to pass through an attached arcade and then a snack shop to get to the rink. The business owners had designed it that way to try to get the most money out of you either on the way in or the way out, but it looked like there were a lot of people who never got past the arcade.

"Sure you don't want to just stay here?" he asked. "I play a mean Mrs. PacMan."

"It's _Ms._ Pac-Man, actually. Not _Mrs._ You better be politically correct, buddy. We've had women's lib now, you know."

He raised his hands in mock defense. "I also kick ass at Donkey Kong. Just so you know."

"Well, I might have to play some Q*bert on the way out, but we're skating first."

As he expected, she laughed at him once he had the skates on. He stumbled his way to the rink, hands out stretched. He fell within his first minute on the surface. "You okay?" she asked when he pulled himself up.

"Of course I'm okay. I get tackled on a weekly basis. I think can handle a little tumble."

Within two minutes, he'd fallen again.

Tami covered her mouth, but she couldn't hide her giggles. "Here," she said when he got up. She literally skated a circle around him until she was in front of him facing backward. "Give me your hands." She held hers out, palms up.

She taught him step by step. Eventually, she let him try on his own. The next time he started to fall, he grabbed for her hand. The time after that, he grabbed for her waist. Eventually, he started to get the hang of it, but it wasn't really necessary to tell her that, was it? Not when he could keep grabbing for her every time he was about to fall. She laughed every time he did it too, and she was even more beautiful when she laughed. There was a sweetness in her natural laughter, affection almost, and no derision. He loved to make her laugh like that.

After an hour she said she wanted a drink.

"Snack shop?" he asked as they stepped up off the rink. He almost fell again, and not on purpose this time.

"No. They way overprice that stuff. They have vending machines that are a little cheaper. Why don't you go into the arcade and get us some change? I'm going to sit down a minute. I think I've got something stuck in the toe of my skates."

"Okay," he agreed and rolled his way cautiously to the attached arcade.

When he got to the change machine, Eric saw his rally girl from this past season, Mary Ellen, leaned against the side of the Centipede machine, some guy half on top of her. She nodded to Eric and smiled and he nodded back. Then she giggled when they guy gave her a peck on the cheek followed by a peck on the neck, and she pushed at him playfully. He turned around, and, when he saw Eric, his face grew rigid.

"Wait for me outside," Mo said to Mary Ellen, and she slid from the machine and sashayed toward the exit.

Mo strolled over and leaned one arm on the change machine as Eric slid in a dollar bill. "That wasn't what it looked like," he said.

"Okay."

"Seriously, man, I know it looked bad, but it wasn't what it looked like."

The coins shot into the silver dish. Eric slid them out. "Okay."

"Nothing at all is going on there. Just friends, like you and Tami. Strictly professional."

Eric put the coins in his pocket. That should be enough for two cokes, but he pulled out another dollar bill, just case Tami wanted some candy. He fed it into the machine. "Friends aren't really professional."

"Yeah, but you know what I mean. Me and the guys were just hanging out and came across her, and she was upset about something, and I was just cheering her up." As the coins clattered into the silver cup again, Mo continued, "Listen, you're not going to mention that to Tami are you? Because she might think there was something going on, and there is absolutely _nothing_ going on."

Eric pulled the coins out and shoved them in his pocket.

"Promise you won't tell Tami. She wouldn't believe you anyway. She'd think you were lying because you have a crush on her."

"What?"

"Don't worry, man. I know half the football team has the hots for her. It's okay with me, as long as you don't act on it."

"Like you didn't act on it with Mary Ellen?"

Mo rolled his eyes. "Man, you know how Mary Ellen is. She comes on to you all the time too, doesn't she? Didn't she leave her panties in your locker once? And was that _your_ fault? If _you_ had a girlfriend, I wouldn't have told her Mary Ellen did that. So don't mention this to Tami. It would break her heart, and all over a silly misunderstanding. It would upset her. You wouldn't want that would you?"

"No." Eric would not want to see Tami upset. That much was true.

Mo laughed. He slapped Eric on the back. Eric rolled forward and had to grip either side of the change machine for balance. "I knew I could count on you, Taylor. So who are you here with?"

"Just…just some girl."

"Is she hot?" Mo asked.

"She's gorgeous."

"Who?"

"Uh…She's just some girl from North Dillon. I met her…uh…in the rink. You wouldn't know her."

"Well, I hope you get laid tonight, my friend, for your sake. You sure need it. You can be too serious. And it's about time you got yourself a little something." Mo titled his head and smirked. "Eh? Eh? You gonna show her how it's done?"

"I…I think she already knows how it's done."

"Oh good! An experienced girl!" Mo slapped him again on the shoulder. "You should at least get some good head tonight then." He looked behind himself toward the exit. "Well I gotta get. See you around school."

Eric nodded to him, turned carefully around, and made his way back to the rink.

"What took you so long?" Tami asked.

"Some idiot tried to talk my ear off," he said. "What kind of coke do you want?"

**[*]**

They spent another hour skating. Tami thought Eric seemed a little distracted. When they had traded their skates for shoes, they broke down and got something from the overpriced snack bar –a soft pretzel, which they shared, and two Icees. Tami slurped her red Icee now and smiled at him from across the table. He was kind of adorable out there, Mr. Star Quarterback, not even able to stand up for more than five minutes at a time. It was nice to be able to do something better than him, to teach him for a change. His hair was all messed up now, wild and dancing, but she thought he actually looked cute that way. Rumpled. Like he'd just been having sex.

Now why did that association pop into her mind? "Hope you're not too bruised tomorrow," she said.

"Tami, seriously, you know I'm a football player, right? You know I'm used to a lot rougher."

"Rougher, huh?" she asked as she ripped a piece of pretzel and brought it to her lips. God, why did that make her think of sex too? Although, she was pretty sure Eric wouldn't be rough in bed. He seemed like the kind of guy who would be gentle, unless you'd been doing it with him for a while, and then, occasionally, he might…

_Not_ that she was thinking about that. Because she wasn't. Because that would be ridiculous. Because she had a boyfriend already. A steady boyfriend. And Eric was just her friend. And he was only a _junior _for God's sake_, _just a boy, really. A boy who happened to be more mature than half the men she knew.

"Let's go to the arcade," she said.

Despite Eric's bragging, Tami lasted longer at Ms. Pac-Man than he did. He beat her top score at Space Invaders, though, and he was a whiz at pinball. She, however, defeated him easily in skee-ball.

"You should have played softball," he said.

"I don't think that skill translates. Skee-ball, softball."

He shrugged. "You know, it would look good on your college application, if you had at least one sport. Spring season's coming up. You should try out. I'd totally come to your games."

"Totally?"

"Yeah. I wouldn't just send my bottom half. I would _totally_ come. All of me."

She laughed. "Okay. I'll think about it. But you better get me home now. My curfew is ten." Unless Eric was tutoring her _at_ the dealership _with_ his father present, and then her mother would let her come home later. "And it's…"

"Eleven."

"Yeah."

"Don't worry." He smirked. "I'll turn off the headlights and slow down when we get close to your house, and I promise I won't shut the door until I'm a block away."

"Screw you," she said, but she was smiling.

**[Saturday Morning]**

Eric hadn't slept much last night. He'd lain in bed, his hands behind his head, thinking – to tell her, not to tell her, to tell her, not to tell her. Mo would hate him, but he didn't have to deal with Mo next season. He did _have_ to deal with most of the rest of the guys, though, and he wanted them to trust him. He didn't want to seem like the kind of a guy who would betray a teammate. No doubt it would upset Tami if she thought Mo was cheating, and he didn't want to hurt her either. He wouldn't mind _comforting_ her though.

This morning he downed two cups of coffee and took a third with him on the way to mass. He sat in the back seat this time, because his mother said she wanted to start going with them again.

Eric was distracted during the mass, and Dad nudged him to stand up at least once. After all that coffee, he had to leave to pee in the middle of the homily, which clearly irritated his father.

When he was in the confessional later, Eric crossed himself and said, "Bless me, father, for I have sinned. It has been a month since my last confession." He took a deep breath and launched through his sins, concluding with "Uh…and I….uh… coveted another guy's girlfriend."

"Resist the devil, and he will flee from you."

"I have resisted. I tried. I can't stop thinking about her."

"Then you must avoid her as much as possible to avoid temptation. Are you frequently in contact with her?"

"Well…I see her at school. And I tutor her three times a week."

"You should ask her to find a new tutor."

"I couldn't do that," Eric insisted. "She needs me."

"You, specifically? Are you the only tutor in all the world, my son?"

"No, of course not. But…I mean, she needs me…to…to be her friend."

The priest coughed.

"The thing is, her boyfriend is cheating on her," Eric said. "Should I tell her, do you think?"

"And what do you hope that would accomplish, my son?"

"Well...It would be telling the truth, right?"

"And what motivates you in this quest for truth? Hmmm? A virtuous concern for the truth itself?"

Eric was silent.

"You hope, perhaps, that she will fall into your arms when you tell her?"

"I…I didn't…"

"Why do you assume she doesn't already know?"

Eric hadn't thought of that. He was silent.

"You must do what your conscience dictates, but I would advise you to avoid her company unless and until she chooses, of her own volition, to break up with her boyfriend. Have you any other sins to confess?"

"No, sir. I mean, father."

"Did you ever apologize to that girl?" the priest asked. "You know, the one you confessed to slandering back in September?"

"I didn't know you were keeping a catalog."

"I have a good memory, my son. So, did you apologize to her?"

"Uh…well….funny thing….same girl, actually. And yeah, I apologized."

The priest was strangely silent. Then he said, deliberately, "The same girl you called a slut is the girl you now covet?"

"I'm not interested in her because I think she's easy, father," Eric burst out. "If that's what you think, that's not it at all. I swear. I like her. I mean…I _really_ like her. She's….you know…I don't know. She's smart and funny and beautiful and not afraid to say what she thinks and - "

" - And another young man's girlfriend."

Eric closed his lips tightly.

The priest sighed. Eric could hear him lean his head back against the wall of the booth. "Ah, to be young and in love." The priest leaned forward again. "Trust me, my son. This too shall pass."


	22. No Joke

**Chapter Twenty-Two**

**[Saturday Evening]**

Tami never saw her mom at the dealership because Mrs. Hayes got off work at 5 PM on Saturday, and Tami came after closing for her tutoring session, but it seemed the job was working out well. Mr. Taylor was pleased with Mrs. Hayes work, and the salary was 20% higher than it had been at the church.

Eric was strangely focused on the SAT prep tonight. Whenever the conversation would stray, he'd re-direct it back to the test. As they were finishing their session and Tami was sliding her SAT prep book into her backpack, a loud, shrill siren went off across the car dealership.

Tami covered her ears. "What's that?" she mouthed to Eric. Just then the lights went out. Instinctively, she dropped her hands and yelped.

Eric laughed and took her hand on the desk and squeezed. The siren stopped and the emergency lights flickered on. Eric immediately let go of her hand as though mortified to have taken it. "That's just a tornado warning."

"Just?" she asked.

"It's probably not anywhere near us."

Mr. Taylor came strutting across the showroom floor. He popped his head into the sales room. "Stay in here," he told them. "This is an interior room with no windows. It's a good place to be." Then he shut the door.

"Where's he going?" Tami asked.

"Back to his office. He'd probably work through the Apocalypse, if it wasn't too loud."

Tami giggled.

"We should probably keep working too," Eric said. "Until it's safe to go home."

"I don't want to," Tami insisted. "We worked hard tonight. Let's just hang out." She could hear the wind howling even through the walls. "Let's just talk."

Eric agreed, though he seemed strangely reluctant to do so.

They ended up pushing the chairs aside and lying on their backs on the floor, using their backpacks as pillows. Eric tossed his football, which he apparently brought with him everywhere, up and down in the air, catching it just at his chest before thrusting it up again.

"First word," Tami said. They were playing a conversational game she'd made up.

"Mama."

"Yeah, I figured you for a mama's boy. Mine was da-da." She bit down on her back teeth. She supposed she'd been a daddy's girl once, long ago, a life time ago, when her dad had been a different man. "I hate him now."

"I kind of know the feeling," Eric said.

"Why? Your dad's fine. He makes an honest living, he doesn't get drunk, he comes to all your games .…hell, he even does the grocery shopping."

"Yeah, but it's like….I don't know. Like he's always disappointed in me. At least your dad's not disappointed in you."

"Yeah, well, his standards aren't that high. And I think your dad's proud of you. He just doesn't know how to say it. First time you rode a bike without training wheels."

"What are training wheels?" He turned his face toward hers and simpered. "Did Princess need training wheels?"

She grabbed the football from his hand and poked him in the chest with it.

"I think I was four," he said.

"I was eight. I really sucked at it. I couldn't balance. Then I had nothing but a bike to get around for years and I got really good." She tossed the football up and caught it. "First kiss. Your cousins don't count."

"Ewwww….All my cousins are guys anyway."

"Still doesn't count."

He grabbed the football back from her.

"I was 8," Tami said. "He was an older man. Eleven. Jacob Garrity. He was a dreamboat," she said melodramatically.

"Any relation to Buddy Garrity?"

"His little brother. He went to college on the west coast though and hasn't been back since, even to visit. So when was your first kiss?"

"Uh….a bit later than yours. Okay. A lot later. I was 13. She was my first girlfriend. We dated in 8th and 9th grade."

"Why did you break up?"

The ball slapped into Eric's hands. He shrugged. "I don't know. After Debbie died, I guess…I was upset."

"Well of course you were!"

"I was pretty closed-off and angry. And I wasn't really the best boyfriend. She stuck with me for a couple months after, but eventually she just couldn't handle it…We didn't even really officially break up. She just got really busy. So I eventually stopped calling. Then her family moved before our sophomore year."

"That's awful," Tami said.

"I wasn't really there for her."

"Well she should have been there for you! That's what it's all about right? You're there for each other at different times. That wasn't your time to be there for her. That was her time to be there for you."

He ran a finger along the white threads of the football. "Like Mo should have been there to celebrate with you when you got that report card."

Tami gritted her teeth. She didn't like that Mo hadn't been supportive, but she didn't want to admit to herself how much it had hurt. "That's not the same. That's not at all the same. Your sister died. That's a big deal."

"And that report card was a big deal to you. You worked really hard to earn those grades." The ball went up in the air and back down. "Just saying, he should have been there. I would have been there."

"You _were_ there." Tami felt a fluttering in her stomach, the wings of the doubt she'd been too long suppressing. Mo loved her. He'd said so four dozen times. He could be really sweet sometimes, when he wanted to be, when he wasn't just interested in his own things. They'd been together now for nine months. She'd never had any other _serious_ boyfriend.

And yet…it was Eric who had helped her to believe she could accomplish her goals, Eric who was there to clap when she met them, Eric with whom she seemed to be her best self. Of course, it was Eric who had called her a slut, too. Mo had never called her that, and he'd defended her with his fists anytime anyone else said it. Maybe even now, Eric still thought he was too good for her. "First blowjob," she said.

A breath – half laugh, half surprised gasp, escaped him. "What?"

"First blow job. When did you get your first blow job?"

"That's personal. Why would you ask that? Would you want me to ask when you _gave_ your first blow job?"

"Yeah, I do want you to ask, actually. I was a _junior_. He was my _boyfriend_. And I thought he'd break up with me if I didn't give him at least _something_. So I did. I wasn't in 9th grade. And I wasn't in the boy's bathroom, just handing them out."

"I never believed that about you."

"Yes, you did."

He was quiet. He toyed with the football. "I'm sorry. I'm….sorry."

"Anyway, he broke up with me when I wouldn't go all the way. So did the next guy I dated. So I went all the way with Mo."

"You…you didn't because you _wanted_ to?"

She shrugged. "Don't get me wrong. I like it _now_. And Mo waited like three months. He waited until I was ready."

"You just said you weren't ready."

"I was mostly ready. And I like it _now_," she insisted. And she did, most of the time. Sometimes it just seemed routine though. Get it over with because Mo wanted it. It had been more thrilling in the beginning for some reason. Maybe that's just how sex over and over again with the same person was. Or maybe she hadn't expected as much in the beginning. Maybe she had started to expect more…some kind of deeper connection along with the sex…

She didn't want to think about this. "So when did you get your first blowjob?"

"Why do you even want to know this?"

Because she didn't want to be thinking about how Mo probably didn't love her and maybe never had. Maybe no guy ever had. Not even her father. "You're a _complete_ virgin, aren't you?"

"Yeah, I'm a virgin, if you don't count my 7th grade teacher."

Tami sat bolt upright. "What?"

He laughed, his muscular chest heaving beneath his sweat shirt. She swatted him on the shoulder. "Screw you, smart ass." She lay back down. "So…but…why? Is it because you're Catholic? Is it a religious thing? Do you think it's a sin?"

"I was _taught_ it's a sin. Doesn't mean I wouldn't do it if I had a steady girlfriend who wanted to do it. Then I'd probably feel guilty after and go to confession. Then I'd probably do it again."

She laughed. "Why bother to confess if you know you're just going to do it again?"

"I don't know. I just…it's what you do. When you're Catholic."

"Well I'm Baptist. We can just confess straight to the big man. We don't need a priest. But I never felt guilt." She just felt _bad_. _Used_. Not so much with Mo, who had written her love notes and romanced her at first, and who had gone steady with her, but with those other two guys she'd fooled around with. Even with Mo, after the first time they went all the way, she hadn't felt great. Losing her virginity had hurt a little, but that wasn't the problem. She'd just felt…a little bit empty after. She didn't know why. "Why don't you have a girlfriend yet? I know at least two girls who would love to date you."

"I don't know. I've been kind of adjusting, you know, to Dillon. And…I can't really relate to girls. I'm not very good at talking to girls. I never have been."

"You talk to me just fine," Tami said.

"You're different. You're…you're easy to talk to for some reason. But every other girl…" The football went up, high this time, and hit the ceiling. This caused it to bounce down at an angel and hit the desk, where it wobbled. Eric stared up at the ceiling. "Like, there was this girl I really liked in 8th grade that I wanted to ask to the junior high dance. It nearly _killed_ me to ask her. I practiced and practiced my speech, how I was going to ask her out, and then finally I just wrote her a note."

She snorted. "Check yes or no?"

"Something like that. But, I kind of forgot to put her name on it. So, I handed it to this girl Jennifer in science class, and kind of motioned for her to pass it up to the girl I liked, but Jennifer thought I meant for her to open it, and she did. And so…that's how I ended up with my first and only girlfriend."

Tami's whole body shook on the floor. She could feel the cheap carpet beneath her back as the laughter ripped through her. "Why didn't you tell her?"

"I didn't want to hurt her feelings. She was so sweet and shy, and she liked me. She was kind of cute, too, I mean, she was okay."

"But did you eventually start to like her? "

"I never _dis_liked her. "

"You know what I mean," Tami insisted.

"I did. I think. I mean…I thought I did. I thought I fell in love with her after a couple of months. I thought I knew what love was." He turned his head toward her. "Now, I'm not so sure I did."

Tami turned her head toward him too.

"Hey, all this is just between me and you, right?" Eric asked. "You don't go blabbing to Mo. I don't know how you even get me to _say_ this stuff."

"Of course I wouldn't tell anyone." She rolled onto her side. "I wouldn't do that to you. I like you."

He rolled on his side too and studied his fingers against the carpet. "I like you too." He raised his eyes slowly to hers.

Tami would have laughed at a scene like this, if she had seen it in a romance movie. A teenage boy and a teenage girl, just gazing into each other's eyes. She would have thought it was such a joke. Except…this didn't feel like such a joke.

Eric tilted his lips toward hers, just a little. She leaned in and kissed him. He tasted salty, like the break room pretzels, but also sweet, and his lips were soft and warm. He put a hand in her hair at the back of her head and kissed her more deeply.

What was she doing? She had a boyfriend already. Eric was a junior, and she would be graduating in a few months. Where could this possibly go? What was she thinking?

She opened her mouth against his.

Tami wasn't sure how many minutes passed there on the floor of Buddy Garrity's sales room, Eric's hands in her hair, on her shoulders, down her back, his tongue in her mouth, his lips on her lips…on her cheek, on her neck, the sound of their breaths mixing with and summersaulting over each other in short gasps and long sighs. But it came to an end when Mr. Taylor pounded on the door and said, "Storm's past. I'm locking up. Y'all still in there?"


	23. A Misunderstanding

**Chapter Twenty-three**

His father had the worst damn timing in the world.

When Eric's dad knocked on that door, Tami ripped herself away from him like he was an embarrassment to her, like she'd made some kind of awful mistake. She shot up to standing, grabbed her backpack, opened the door (by then Eric was sitting up), and smiled broadly at Mr. Taylor. "Y'all have a safe drive home," she said and stepped through the door.

"You too, Ms. Hayes," Eric's dad told her. "Want us to follow you to make sure you get home safely?"

"It doesn't look so bad anymore," she said, "I'll be fine."

Mr. Taylor looked at Eric sitting on the floor, then back at Tami headed for the door, then back at Eric. "What are you doing on the floor, son?"

"Sitting."

"Don't be a smart ass with me."

Eric stood up. "We were just studying."

"On the floor?"

"Yes, sir." Eric grabbed his backpack.

"Get in the truck."

**[*]**

Tami slammed her steering wheel with the flat of her palm. Why had she allowed that to happen? Of course, it hadn't just happened, had it? Eric had titled his lips a little closer, but she'd been the one to lean in, to _initiate_. He'd sure as hell responded though.

She felt guilty for cheating on Mo, even though she half suspected he'd already done that and maybe more with Mary Ellen. Suspected. She didn't _know_. Even if Mo had, she should have confronted him about Mary Ellen before she'd gone and kissed some other guy. She should have confronted him about her the first time she'd seen them flirting by the lockers. Or the second. Or the third.

Hell, she had Mo's letter jacket on. It was on her right now. She'd kissed Eric in Mo's letter jacket.

The guilt wasn't what bothered her the most, though. She was afraid that salesroom floor make-out session might somehow mess up her friendship with Eric. What was next, after something like that? Obviously he liked it, but…where did they go from here? What if it somehow made them less at ease with each other, less naturally themselves? She'd _never_ been so much herself with anyone before.

She should never have done it. She should have stuck with what she had, because she already had an uncomplicated boyfriend and a great best friend – and that's what Eric had become. Her best friend.

**[*] **

On the drive home, Eric's dad was largely silent. The windshield wipers rose and fell in a rhythmic woosh. Eventually, Mr. Taylor spoke. "Tami's dating Mo McArnold, isn't she?"

Eric murmured.

"He was an exceptional quarterback his first three seasons. I suppose that's why he got a scholarship offer from A&M."

Eric stared at the raindrops forming on the windshield, being smeared away, and reforming.

"He's a senior, Mo McArnold," Eric's father continued. "A senior like Tami. I suppose, if she gets into college like you're trying to help her do, she'll be moving on soon. Moving on from Dillon." Mr. Taylor drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. "You, on the other hand, have another full year of high school. Another full year to spend concentrating on football. And your studies. Eye on the prize."

Eric turned and looked out the passenger's side window. He wanted to say something, but he didn't know what. He wanted to lash back at his father, but he also didn't want the fight.

Silence descended again. His father was often quiet, but there was a strange intensity in his silence now, as though he were repeatedly turning something over in his mind and trying to understand it.

"Although…." Mr. Taylor said, "Your mother likes her. Your mother likes Tami. She's fond of that girl. And Tami…I guess if it weren't for that girl, your mother never would have gotten the help she needed. She wouldn't hear it from me, though, would she? Not from me." The wind wooshed against the windows.

Eric turned back to study his father's face. The man's jaw was set tight, and he was breathing in and out rhythmically, like he was trying to control himself. The breathing grew stronger. Eric noticed his father's eyes were glinting. He thought it must be the headlights of a passing car at first, until he realized the light was the effect of the pooling tears. One escaped and slid down the man's cheek.

"I lost her for two years," his father said. "Your mother. She's still not quite back. She may never be. And I lost my daughter forever."

Eric turned away. These unexpected tears unsettled him, made him feel strangely anchorless. His father had always held it together. _Always._ If his father wasn't holding it together…what did that mean?

After a while, Eric shot a furtive glance at his dad. The man was still crying. Quietly, but he was crying. He kept his teeth clamped down and his eyes fixed on the road.

When they pulled into the driveway, Mr. Taylor turned off the truck, took a shaky breath, brushed his arm across his face three ways, and said, "I'm sorry I'm not the father you deserve. But I tried to be better than my own father. And, one day, you'll try to be better than me." He opened the door without looking at Eric.

Eric stayed in the car for another twenty minutes, listening to the wind and rain.

**[*]**

When Tami neared home, she saw three figures scurrying on her roof in the midst of the now light rain, and her mother and sister, bundled up in rain jackets, hoods up, watching from below. She leapt from her truck. As she ran closer, she saw that the wreckage of a tree lay by the side of her house.

"What's going on?" she asked. The wind howled once, and she crossed her arms over herself.

"What's it look like, genius?" Shelley asked. "A tree put a hole in our roof. The MacGill brothers are patching it with a tarp right now so the rain doesn't mess up everything inside."

They ended up driving an hour to Aunt Rita's house near Midland. She took them in and promised they could stay as long as they needed until the house was fixed. It was two in the morning before Tami was finally settled in a sleeping bag on her cousin Linda's bedroom floor. Even so, she couldn't sleep.

By the time the sun came up, Tami had decided she was going to break up with Mo. She didn't even care whether or not he was cheating on her with Mary Ellen. He simply hadn't supported her the way Eric had.

**[Sunday Morning]**

"Eric, honey," Mrs. Taylor said as he poured himself a cup of morning coffee. She was sitting at the table working a crossword puzzle. She used to love crossword puzzles before Debbie died, but he couldn't remember her doing one for a long time.

"Yeah?"

"Tami called this morning."

He nearly dropped the mug he was holding.

"She said she's not going to be able to make your usual Sunday evening tutoring session. Her house had some damage from the storm, and she and her family have gone to stay with her aunt in Midland."

Eric topped off his coffee and slid the pot back onto the burner. "Was it bad?"

"Hole in the roof. Some workmen are fixin' it today. She said she'd talk to you in school on Monday."

"Did she leave her cousin's number?"

His mom shook her head.

At least she'd called, he supposed. That was a good sign, right?

**[Sunday Night]**

"I'd totally go for him," Tami's cousin said. Linda was twenty, but she was still living with her parents while she worked as a waitress. She had plans to move out soon, she claimed.

Tami hadn't been able to fall asleep again tonight, so eventually she'd said "Pssst…" to see if her cousin was still awake. They'd ended up talking about her predicament. They weren't close, but Linda didn't live in Dillon, and she wouldn't be yakking to anyone in Dillon, so she seemed an easy sounding board to Tami.

"He sounds really sweet," Linda continued. "And, obviously, he wants more than a friendship, right?"

"It certainly seems that way. I'm just afraid, you know, of risking the friendship."

"Sounds like it's a little too late for that. Can't put the genie back in the bottle, can you?"

"I guess not," Tami said. Then she mused aloud, "I think I'll break up with Mo right after lunch tomorrow." She'd have to leave at six thirty in the morning to get to school on time from Midland. "He's in my third period class, so I don't want to do it in the morning and then have to see him again. I'll sit with him at lunch, and wait until just before lunch is over, right before fourth period. Then I'll tell him."

"Then you'll find Eric and make out with him behind the bleachers, right?"

"Maybe."

Linda sighed. "I miss the bleachers."

Tami closed her eyes. She didn't want to be twenty and still living in her mother's house and sighing over high school memories that were done and gone and over forever. She already knew she didn't want Eric to be only a fond high school memory, and maybe that's what scared her the most.

**[Monday]**

Eric didn't share any classes with Tami, so on Monday he didn't see her until lunch. She was sitting next to _Mo _at the cafeteria table. What did _that_ mean?

Eric put his tray down cautiously next to Scooter and across from Mo and Tami. He eased onto the bench. He didn't look at Tami as he opened his milk carton.

"You have fun Friday night?" Mo asked him.

"Sure," Eric said.

"You score with that chick you were with?"

Eric looked up anxiously at Tami, whose eyes widened a little.

Mo motioned to Scooter. "Eric met this girl at the skating rink Friday and was trying to get laid."

"Really?" Tami asked, glaring at Eric. "Is _that_ what you were trying to do?"

"I, uh…"

"He told me she was gorgeous and he was going to show her how it's done," Mo continued.

"I didn't…." Eric stuttered. "I didn't say….I…."

Tami stood up and grabbed her half empty tray. "I have to get to class early."

Eric watched her go. Scooter said something to him, but he didn't hear. "….Or what?"

Eric shook his head, jumped up, and grabbed his backpack.

"You gonna eat this?" Mo called after him. "Or can I have it?"


	24. The Whole Truth

**Chapter Twenty-Four**

Tami slammed her locker with an angry thud. She'd been getting ready to draw Mo aside from the cafeteria table to break up with him when Eric showed up. And then Mo had said that thing about Friday, and….suddenly, it was like she'd woken up from a pleasant dream to a blaring alarm clock.

Had Eric just been playing her all this time? Had he really been bragging about trying to seduce her to Mo, without Mo even knowing who he was talking about? Had Eric secretly been rubbing into Mo's face that he was just trying to get in Tami's pants? Was that _all_ this was? How _could_ it be?

"Tami – "

She turned to see Eric coming fast down the hall. She let go of the handle of her locker and walked away. He caught up with her. "Tami, we need to talk."

"I don't want to talk to you right now." She walked faster, but he overtook her.

Eric got in front of her and put a hand on both of her arms.

"Let go of me!"

"You're not going to talk to me?" he asked. "Get my side? Seriously? After _all_ you've tolerated in Mo, you're not going to give me at least a _chance_ to explain?"

She stepped back, away from his hands, and leaned back against the locker. "So explain," she said.

He sighed. "Okay, I never said that. What Mo said I said. _He_ said that. He said that stuff to me and I just…didn't not say anything."

She shook her head. "You're not making any sense."

**[*]**

So he told her. Everything he'd seen in the arcade, the entire conversation he'd had with Mo. "I didn't know if I should tell you. I debated. I agonized. I didn't know what was right. I even talked to my priest about it, although he wasn't much help."

He put a hand on the locker just to the left of her head. She had her arms crossed over her chest, but her posture wasn't overly defensive anymore. "Should I have told you?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said. "I think part of me already knew. I mean, I didn't know he was at the arcade with Mary Ellen, but I think already knew he was cheating. I just didn't want to know. So I didn't let myself _really_ know."

Eric looked down at her boots. He stepped a little closer, until his body was almost touching hers, and then he looked up again. "You're breaking up with Mo, right?"

The bell rang. She slipped out from under him. "I was going to break up with him at lunch. Although I don't know what you're so eager for. He's probably going to try to kick your ass."

Eric smirked with more confidence than he felt. "_Try_ is the operative word there."

"_Operative._ That's going on my SAT list." She titled her head. "Listen. I really don't want you to get in another fight with Mo."

"I'll try not to, but if he jumps me – "

She stepped a little closer. "We could keep it a secret. I can break up with him just because of Mary Ellen. I don't have to tell him about us."

"So there's going to be an _us_?"

"I think there's _already_ an _us_," she said. "But let's keep it quiet for now."

Eric raised an eyebrow. "You want me to be your dirty little secret?"

She shrugged. "It could be kind of exciting, you know. Sneaking around. No need to announce it yet. Everyone knows you're tutoring me, so it's perfectly natural for us to be seen together. As long as you don't kiss me or hold my hand while we're in public…"

"But…I don't want to…I mean, I want people to know."

She leveled her eyes at him. "Why? So you can show me off? Like a prize cow?"

"No. That's not it."

"So you don't mind keeping it secret, then?"

He _did_ mind, but he didn't know how to put his reasons into words, so he just said, "If that's really what you want."

"I just don't want you to get in trouble for fighting Mo again. You could get suspended or something, this second time. It could hurt your chances of a scholarship offer."

"So this is all out of concern for me?"

She smiled. "Well, I like your face. I'd rather not see it bruised. So I guess it's kind of for me too."

**[*]**

Mo was angry when Tami broke up with him. At first he insisted on his innocence, but he soon gave up that charade. "Who told you? Eric? It was Eric, right? I know it was Eric. I should kick that guy's ass. He just wants you for himself."

"Eric didn't tell me," Tami assured him. "I didn't _need_ Eric to tell me. Do you know how many times I've seen you and that girl flirting by the lockers?"

"Yeah, well if I see Eric coming on to you, I'll _know_ it was him. If he so much as kisses your cheek, I'll kick his ass. So you tell him for me."

Tami shook her head and walked off.

**[February]**

Eric was glad it wasn't football season. He couldn't think straight. Whenever he was tutoring Tami, he'd watch her lips as she spoke and seize every excuse he could to kiss her. In school, his eyes would follow her in the hallways, and when she'd stop to talk to him, he'd have to cross his arms tightly across his chest to keep from touching her in public.

**[*]**

Every time she went to a tutoring session with Eric, Tami felt a flutter in her chest. It was an actual, physical sensation. They'd steal kisses over the coffee table in his living room, beside the picnic bench before school when no one was around, across the desk in Buddy Garrity's sales room.

Despite this pleasant distraction, she remained doggedly focused on her goal of getting into college. She continued studying diligently at home, because not much studying was occurring during her tutoring sessions these days.

Tam also tried out for the softball team, and they must have been desperate for players, because she made the cut. Being new to the team, she didn't expect any play time, but it at least gave her something to put down as and extracurricular on her college applications. She filled them out and mailed them off to MWU and TMU. Her SAT scores would have to follow.

One morning, the guidance counselor called Tami into her office to alert her to a statewide speech competition.

"But I'm not even on the forensics team," Tami protested.

"I know. You don't have to be for this." Mrs. Mason pushed a packet of information across the desk. "You just write a speech about what college means to you, send in a cassette tape of yourself giving the speech, and then from that they choose twenty students to come to Dallas and compete live at a banquet. Three of those twenty students will get a $10,000 college scholarship."

"What if I don't get into college?"

"You can use the scholarship for trade school," Mrs. Mason said. "But you're _going_ to get into college, Tami, if you do well on the SAT's."

When she left the office and passed Eric in the hall, she subtly slipped him a note: "Meet me behind the bleachers at lunch."

When he showed up, ducking his way under the sixth row and then standing up straight as he walked toward her at the back, he was smiling. He probably thought they were going to make out here. They didn't kiss or touch in school, because they were still keeping their more-than-friendship secret. He looked disappointed when she said she wanted to talk, but he listened.

"Should I enter the competition, do you think?" she concluded.

"Of course you should do it," he said. "Why wouldn't you?"

"I haven't been in a speech completion since seventh grade. Why would I stand a chance of winning?"

"Because you're amazing, Tami. You've got this voice…people just want to listen to it." He smiled. "People can't take their eyes off you."

She slid her arms around his waist and kissed his neck. "_People_, huh?"

"People," he murmured.

They made-out beneath the bleachers, with tangled tongues and roving hands and hungry nips, and Eric went to his next class with his shirt collar popped up to hide the hickey. The grin he couldn't hide.


	25. Tutoring Eric

**Warning: ** This chapter is **rated M.** It's not overly graphic, but it's not my normal closed-bedroom-door approach either. I guess after 24 chapters of build-up I just couldn't help it. Skip if you prefer.

**CHAPTER 25****  
**

**[March]**

"Where are your parents?" Tami asked when she came over to Eric's for her regular Sunday evening SAT-prep session.

"Dad's working late and my mom went to some book club," Eric said. "It's good for her, I think. To be socializing, you know?"

"What are they reading?"

"How would I know?" Eric asked as he led her into the living room.

"You could have asked."

Eric took her backpack from her and set it by the coffee table.

Tami had been waiting for a long stretch of time when she could be completely alone with him. Usually it was the guy urging her off to some private spot, often before she was quite ready, but she'd been _waiting_ for this opportunity.

She said, "I think the last thing I still need to review is the geometry I didn't pay attention to. We better go to your bedroom to get your compass."

**[*] **

As Eric rustled in the drawer for the compass, he heard Tami shut and lock the door. He looked up and smiled. Did this mean they were going to do something a little more risqué than just necking?

She walked around him to the other side of the desk and hoisted herself up to sit atop it. She pushed the chair out with her bare foot. It was mid-March and already sandal weather. That might change again, and she'd pull out her cowgirl boots, but today she'd come in sandals and left them inside the kitchen door. Her toenails were painted a bright red.

Did she want him to sit in that chair?

He did sit, his legs open loosely, a hand on each of his knees. She slid to the center of the desk, so she was directly in front of him, and crossed her legs beneath her skirt. She wasn't wearing any tights. He couldn't take his eyes off those long, bare legs.

"You're a good tutor," she said. "You've really helped me. I think I want to repay the favor and tutor you."

He looked up from her legs to her eyes. "In….in….what?"

"I'm not ready to go _all the way_," she said, "but I think you've got a lot to learn before we do that anyway. I want to help you learn. Can I help you learn, Eric?" She slipped a bare foot in his lap.

Instinctively, he shut his eyes tight. "God yes."

"How far have you gone?"

He opened his eyes again. A blush crept across his face. The entire year they were dating, Jennifer hadn't let him past first base, though he'd made a couple of timid tries for second, which she'd deflected. He hadn't had a girlfriend since. "Just…as far as you and I have gone."

"Mhmmm…." She slid her foot out of his lap and slipped off the desk. She walked to the bed and ran a hand over the bedspread. "Are you a good student, Eric?"

When he stood up, he accidentally knocked the chair over. "I'm…I'm the best student," he said as he picked the chair up and pushed it under the desk. "I'm…I'm a quick study. I promise."

Her laugh was sultry, but with a tint of a girlish giggle behind it. "Come here." She patted the center of the bed.

He sat on the bed, his back propped up against the headboard and his legs outstretched. Tami straddled him, her knees on either side of his hips. She crossed her arms over herself, pulled off her shirt, and tossed it on the floor. "You know how to take off a girl's bra?" she asked with a teasing smile.

He reached out and slipped a finger under the left shoulder strap and slowly inched it down. Then he did the same thing with the right. He slid his hands around the back and began a confused fumble at the solid fabric.

She giggled. "It's a front clasp."

"Oh."

"Let me show you."

He watched as she teasingly undid the bra and pulled it from her breasts.

"Oh God," he said.

She smiled affectionately and put her own fingers on the bare flesh just above her chest. "I want to show you how I like my breasts to be touched. Do you want to watch?"

He must have died. Right here in this bed, at some point this morning, unbeknownst to himself, he must have died. Because he was pretty sure he was in heaven.

**[*]**

Despite her wild-child reputation, Tami had never been particularly brazen. She'd responded to pressure, but she'd rarely initiated. She didn't know why she felt so much more comfortable now, so much more assertive…Maybe it was because she knew Eric was less experienced than she was. Maybe if it was because she trusted him completely not to push her any farther than she wanted to go. Maybe it was because he respected her. Probably it was all three.

She showed him how she wanted her breasts touched and then invited him to touch her. He pulled her closer, captured her mouth with his own, and nibbled her bottom lip as he caressed and pinched her as she'd shown him. She felt feverish, more in need of release than ever before. She ground against him through their clothes, but it wasn't enough. She whimpered.

"What do you want, Tami?" he asked. "Teach me. I'm a good student."

Mo had never seemed all that interested in what she wanted. Sex with him had felt good most of the time, but sometimes he'd touch her in spots or ways that just didn't work for her at that particular moment, and she'd try to guide him somewhere else that felt especially good, but then he'd stray back to what interested him. He never asked to be _shown_ what she liked.

Eric's eyes were bright and hungry as she lay beside him, slid her panties off from under her skirt, and dropped them on the floor.

"Oh God," he said.

"I want you to touch me."

His voice was thick and sent a chill up her spine when he said, "Show me."

She took his hand and slipped it beneath her skirt. She put her fingers over his and guided him. Then she let go of his hand.

"Like this?" he breathed into her ear. "Is this what you want?"

She couldn't answer coherently. She could only whimper and move. The build-up had never felt this intense. It wasn't long before she collapsed against his chest. He held her silently while she recovered, his breath uneven in her ear.

Eventually, she slid out of the bed and put her clothes back on. She didn't know when Eric's dad was coming home, and she figured they needed to be able to dress on short notice. Besides, it probably wasn't safe for _both_ of them to have their underwear off at the same time.

**[*]**

What was she doing? Why was she getting dressed already? Eric was going to die. Assuming he wasn't already dead and in heaven, he was certain he was going to die soon. If she didn't touch him, the need was quite simply going to _kill_ him.

"Is that it?" he asked. "Is that…that the end of the lesson?"

She chuckled.

Why did it amuse her to torture him?

"No, sugar," she said. "We're not quite finished with today's lesson."

"Sugar?" he asked.

"Why not sugar? You're sweet."

"A guy doesn't want to be sweet." Girls didn't usually find sweet guys sexy. He wanted Tami to find him sexy. She sure seemed to a minute a go.

"Why not?" she asked, stepping to the bed and pushing him down by the shoulder until his head rested on the pillow. "When you're sweet" – she lay on the bed beside him and kissed his cheek – "it makes me want to taste you." She kissed his chin and then his chest through the t-shirt, and then began to trail kisses downward.

"Oh God, Tami. Yes please. Do that."

"Do what?" she asked innocently, pushing up his T-shirt and kissing his stomach.

"Whatever you want to do to me."

She looked up and smiled mischievously. She kneeled over him again so she could easily use both hands to undo his belt buckle. As she popped the snap on his jeans, she asked, "Are you going to have to go to confession tomorrow?"

"Uh-huh…."

"You sure you want me to do this?" she asked as she stroked him through his jeans. "I don't want you to feel _too_ guilty."

"I want to feel guilty. I want to feel really, really guilty."

"Okay then." She slid his zipper down. "Just one instruction. I don't really like to…you know…" He didn't know. He didn't know what she was talking about, but he knew he was going to do anything she asked. _Anything._ "Just…tell me when you're about to cum, okay?" she said. "I promise I'll take care of you, sugar, but warn me, okay? Promise?"

He nodded.

She pushed his jeans and boxers down and lowered her head. She started with a single kiss.

"I'm gonna cum."

**[*]**

Eric's face was buried in his hands. He had yanked his boxers and pants back up and then covered his face. Tami could see the crimson glow creeping out from under his palms.

"It's okay," she assured him again, snuggling up to his side and draping an arm and leg around him. "Really, Eric. It's fine. It's okay. It happens sometimes." She rested her head on his shoulder, but he still didn't remove his hands from his face.

She kissed his cheek. "Hey," she whispered, "you're an amazing student. We have plenty more sessions, don't we?"

He slowly slid his hands from his face. He was **_so_ **red. She forced herself not to laugh. A wave of fondness washed over her.

"We do?" he asked hopefully. "My mom's usually home."

"We'll figure something out."

"Do…should I buy some condoms?"

"I thought you Catholics were against birth control," she teased.

He laughed. "Well, we're against…" He gestured at her and himself and the rumpled bedspread. "…all this too. Outside of marriage."

"We're not going all the way anytime soon, so we don't have to worry about me getting pregnant. And if you're worried about STDs, I got myself tested after I found out Mo was cheating, and I don't have any." She slid a hand over his chest. "Don't buy condoms yet."

He kissed her. His skin was warm, but not quite so red as it had been a moment ago. "Tami," he whispered, "I love you."

She pulled her head back and searched his eyes. "Do you really?" she asked. All three guys she'd ever fooled around with had said that immediately after. It meant – "I love what you just did for me."

He brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. "I do. I think I've loved you ever since our first tutoring session at the dealership. You stepped through that door, and you were just…you took my breath away. Something about you that night just…took my breath away. I know that sounds like a total cliché, but it did. I think I've been half in love with you ever since. And now I'm totally in love with you."

"Totally?" she asked.

"Yeah," he half laughed. "Not just my bottom half. Totally. _All_ of me."

She kissed his lips. "I love you too."


	26. Test Day

**Chapter Twenty-Six**

**[Saturday]**

Eric took the SAT with Tami, even though he'd have another chance his senior year. Tami was in the same testing room as him, and she was bent over her test, ferociously filling in bubbles with her no. 2 pencil. He couldn't stop glancing at her.

He was currently trying to complete the verbal analogies, and the first question was:

Ejaculation: Shout ::

A. Murmur: Yell

B. Accept : Reject

C. Secret: Whisper

D. Cold: Hot

E. Exclamation: Ask

Instinctively, he looked at Tami again. They hadn't had a chance to really fool around since that day in his bedroom. They'd made out a little beneath the bleachers, but that was about it. He wondered when they were going to be able to be completely alone for a long stretch of time. He'd thought of suggesting that they meet late one night when he got off work and drive his truck down by the lake. They could put a sleeping bag in the bed. But he feared that would be as if a beggar had been given a heaping bag of gold only to immediately ask for more.

He looked back at the analogy. _Ejaculation is to shout as…_ He thought to himself, _You shout when you ejaculate?_ He sure had, "O, God…" Tami had giggled at him for all of the O Gods. He said it constantly whenever they made out. He tried not to, but O God just kept coming out of his mouth. It was like some kind of mountaintop experience, being with her.

He glanced at Tami again. She was flipping a page of the test booklet. He looked back at the analogy. _No, it's ejaculation, not ejaculate. An ejaculation is something you shout. Is a murmur something you yell? No. You don't yell a murmur._ He crossed that one out.

His eyes were drawn to Tami once more. She was chewing on her eraser. It was in her mouth. _O God_, he thought. And then, _Concentrate damn it. Concentrate._

_Accept: Reject_, he thought. _Those are both verbs._ He crossed that one out.

He peered at Tami again. Her head was tilted to the side, and her brow was furrowed. She was clearly puzzling over something. Then her eyes lit up. God she had beautiful eyes. She filled in a bubble. Eric looked back at the analogy. _Secret: Whisper. You whisper a secret. You shout an ejaculation. Got it!_ He filled in C on his scantron and moved to the next problem:

"Organism: Animal :: "

He blinked. He had to read it three times before he realized it didn't say _orgasm_.

It went on like this. When there was one minute left for the section, he filled in the rest of the unanswered questions with a straight line of C's.

**[*]**

"How do you think you did?" Tami asked him as he drove her home afterward.

"Okay," he lied.

"I feel pretty confident," she said. "What did you put for that analogy that used masticate?"

For at least sixty seconds, he'd thought it said _masturbate_. "I…I think I guessed on that one."

"I picked the slurp water one because you can slurp water like a cow can masticate grass, but there was also suck and popsicle, so I think there were actually two right answers. I think that question was a mistake. Don't you? I mean…" She turned. Her lips were red and perfect. "Suck?"

_O God. _

"You okay, Eric?"

"Uh-huh." He looked back at the road.

"That whole test taking thing was very stressful. You want to do something to blow off steam before you take me home?"

_Blow off. O God._

"Eric?"

"Yes!" Had he yelled that? "Yeah. I mean. That's a good idea. I took the whole day off work."

"What do you want to do? You want to go to the arcade?"

He gripped the steering wheel. "Maybe we could go to the lake."

**[*]**

Tami skipped a rock across the still surface of the water. It was about seventy-five degrees, perfect weather. Eric had driven into a small clearing a little way into the woods to park his pick-up. She'd asked why he didn't just park it in the semi-open meadow right by the lake, but he said he thought it would be safer in there. "Safe from what?" she'd asked, and he'd shrugged.

She threw another rock out and watched it plunk-plunk-plunk. She wasn't a bad rock skipper. She wasn't a bad SAT-taker either. She felt really good about herself. She hadn't felt this good about herself since…probably since she was a little kid.

"You have a good arm," Eric said. "Is Coach Williams going to let you pitch your next game?"

"No. I'm lucky if she plays me at all. Do you think it's going to hurt my college application a lot? That I have, like…_no_ extracurricular activities?"

"You have four years of part-time work experience. That should count for something." He tried to skip a rock. Plunk.

"I don't have any idea how I'm going to pay for it even if I do get in." She'd been thinking about the fact that college was five months away. She came up to him and put her arms around his waist. "I'm going to miss you if I get in."

He kissed her. She slid her tongue into his mouth. He buried a hand in her hair, and she pressed against him. When he dragged his lips away, he asked, "Do you want to maybe fool around?"

"Is that why you parked back in the woods?"

"No."

"Liar." She took his hand and began tugging him toward the pick-up. "I hope you have a sleeping bag in there."

"I do," he said with a growing smile.

"Yeah? Why's that?" she teased.

"I'm a regular boy scout. Always prepared."

"You know we're not going all the way, right?" she asked.

"I know. I'm not _that_ prepared."

**[*]**

Eric was glad he'd bought a cover for the bed of his pick-up. He'd debated whether he should spend the money or not, and eventually decided he wanted it.

They left the back window open but the hatch up. It was too warm to close it all up, but Tami wanted to be able to hide if anyone happened to come by, not that it was likely they would. They unzipped the sleeping bag and spread it out.

After they'd been lying side by side and kissing and petting for a while, she unzipped his jeans and told him, "I'm just going to use my hand this time. I'm not trying to torture you, I promise, but…I'm going to squeeze a little and then let up for a bit and then do it again. So…"

"You can train me?" he asked, the self-disappointment seeping into his voice.

She slid her hand into his jeans. He closed his eyes and breathed in. "You're a good lover, Eric," she whispered. "You know why?"

"Nuh-uh."

"Because you love me."

He lasted a lot longer this time. Afterwards, he undid her jeans and slipped his hand inside and repaid the favor. When they were zipped and buttoned up again, she snuggled in, her head against his chest. "I'm really going to miss you when I get into college," she said.

He smiled. It was the first time she'd said _**when**_ instead of _**if**_.


	27. Awaiting Punishment

**Chapter Twenty-Seven**

**[April]**

As Eric was getting his books between fourth and fifth period, Tami stopped by his locker. As usual, she kept three feet of distance between their bodies. "The pitcher strained her wrist," she said. "Coach William is going to let me pitch the next game."

He grinned. "I bet you'll really step up to the plate."

"You're so corny," she said. She must have liked his corniness, though, because she leaned in and kissed him, right there in the middle of the hallway, as though she'd forgotten they were keeping their relationship a secret.

Mo saw it and came thundering toward them. "You told her, didn't you, Taylor? So you could steal her for yourself." He slammed Eric's locker shut for emphasis. "Because you thought you'd get lucky with her! You disloyal piece of shit!"

"Me?" Eric asked as Tami took a step away from both of them. "You want to talk to _me_ about loyalty? _You_ cheated on _her_. And you want to talk about getting lucky? You were lucky just to be with her. And _you_ screwed it up."

"Lucky? You think I'm just lucky?"

"Lucky," Eric said.

"Yeah? Well you're going to be lucky if I don't break your nose three ways to Sunday!"

"I'm not afraid of you, asshole."

"Red light!" Mo screamed.

Eric knew Tami didn't want him to fight, but what was he supposed to do? Animal instinct took over. Their fight drew quite the crowd.

The principal decided not to suspend Mo because it might hurt his scholarship offer if there was anything "on record." They couldn't suspend Eric and not suspend Mo, so the principal meted out to Eric the worst punishment he possibly could. He promised to call Eric's father at work.

Eric went through the rest of his day with a black eye, dreading what his father would do when he showed up at the dealership for work this evening. Maybe he shouldn't go to work, but that would probably make it worse.

When he was leaving after school, Tami came by his truck. "See?" she said. "That's why I wanted to keep it a secret."

"Hey, you kissed me."

"I know." She stepped forward and lightly touched the bruise under his eye. "Poor thing."

"I got him just as good, you know."

She lowered her hand to his hip. "You two are done now, right? That little pissing match is the end of it, right?"

He shrugged. "It is for me. I mean, if he just up and punches me, I'm going to fight back. But it's not like I'm ever going to tackle him over the lunch table."

"Good."

He put his hands on her hips. "Hey, now that we're officially public…want me to take you to prom? Assuming I'm not grounded for this fight. Even if I am, I'll sneak out for you."

She smiled. "That's sweet, but you don't have to. Prom is so expensive. I should probably use the money I'd spend on a dress for college. And you'd probably spend even more than me."

"I don't mind," he said.

She patted his shoulder. "Really. I don't want to go to any silly old prom."

He frowned. "But you went to Homecoming with Mo. Hell, you were Homecoming _Queen_. You like dances. I know you like that kind of stuff."

She shrugged. "I do like dances….I just...that whole Homecoming court thing…Mo wanted to show me off. And maybe _I_ wanted to show off to. But I don't want to be shown off only for my looks anymore. I want to show off my intelligence. My talents. Not just my body."

He looked down at the parking lot.

"What's wrong?"

He plunked back against his truck. "I just…I just want to take you out, Tami. We've been sneaking around…fooling around…we've been together about three months now and I've never once taken you out on a _real_ date." They'd met under the bleachers, in the sales room, at the lake. "I want to take you out," he continued. "I'm your _boyfriend_! I want you to acknowledge that."

He shook his head, mumbled _never mind_, and grabbed his door handle.

"Hey, hey," she said softly, hand over his hand.

He turned to face her.

"I'm sorry, Eric. If I made you feel like that…like I don't want to acknowledge you….I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. I love you." She stepped in close and kissed him. "Take me to prom. Please? Take me with you."

"Really?" he asked.

"I want to go to prom."

He smiled and kissed her.

As they were kissing, some cheerleaders walked by and one said to the other, "Did you know they were a couple?"

The other replied, "It was totally obvious to me he's been crushing on her since like forever."

And then the other: "What happened to Mo? So, is he like _available_ now? I mean, if you don't count Mary Ellen."

And the first, her voice now fading: "No one counts…"

"Listen," Tami said when she pulled away. "Just because it's prom, I don't want you to think we're going to go all the way after. I want to hold off on that. I don't want to do that prom night. It's too cliché. Honestly, I may not want to do it for a while more. I don't know when I'll want to."

"Okay." Had he suggested he _expected_ that? He didn't, but he did _wonder_ why she wanted to wait when she'd done it with Mo after three months of dating. Then again, he knew she'd done more than she really wanted, sooner than she really wanted, with all three of her past boyfriends. He didn't want that to happen in their relationship. He wanted her to fully want everything they did together. He was determined not to be one of her past regrets. "I just…want to take you out."

She looked into his eyes, her own bright and happy, like a little girl whose just seen something step out of a fairytale and isn't quite sure whether or not to believe it's real.

**[*]**

Tami waitressed for two hours after school, and when she got home, her mother was sitting at the table with an envelope in front of her. "Open it! Open it!" She told Tami when she walked through the kitchen door.

Tami had never seen her mother so excited about a piece of mail before. "Ohh….kay." But then she saw what it was. Her SAT scores.

After she'd pulled out the paper, scanned it, and handed it to her mother, they danced around the kitchen together. "I'm so proud of you!" Mrs. Hayes said.

Tami couldn't remember the last time her mother had said those words, _I'm proud of you_. She'd spent so many of the past years warning Tami against becoming too much like her father that maybe she'd forgotten to praise Tami for who she was.

Shelley came in the kitchen and said, "I don't know what's going on, but it seems like we need to go out for ice cream to celebrate it."

"I have to tell Eric," Tami insisted and picked up the kitchen phone. He wasn't home, so she left a message asking him to call back.

On the way to the ice cream parlor, from the front passenger's seat, Tami said, "Mom, would it be okay if I went to prom with Eric? Just as friends." Tami's mom seemed to like Eric. It didn't seem like much of a risk to ask. "You know, he tutored me and helped me, and I thought we could celebrate that way. Just as friends."

"What do you take me for, Tami?" her mother asked as she sped up to get through a yellow light. "I know you two aren't just _friends_."

Shelley snorted from the backseat.

"Really, Mom, Eric and I are just – "

" - Tami, here's the deal. He picks you up at the door. I get pictures. As many as I want. And he brings you back by 11 pm."

**[*]**

When Eric came to work at the dealership that evening, he was prepared for the worst. But his dad wasn't there. "He's gone for the day," Buddy Garrity told him. "He said to tell you to lock up and go on home early at 8."

Eric worried what his father would say the entire drive home, but when he pulled into the driveway, he didn't see his father's truck. When he got inside, his mother wasn't home either. She'd left a note:

"Your dad is taking me out to dinner. We'll be back by 9. – Mom."

Were they discussing how to crucify him? Or did his father just want him to stew in fear for a while longer? Eric decided to hide out in his bedroom. Maybe if he pretended to be asleep, he wouldn't have to deal with his father tonight.

At 8:50, he heard the truck pull up.

At 8:55, he heard the low murmur of his parents' voices in their bedroom, laughter, and then big band music go on at about five volume levels higher than his mother usually played it.

At 9:30 the music went off.

At 9:40 there was a loud knock on his door. Eric didn't answer.

"I know you're awake, son," his father called through the door. "I'm going to have a cigar on the back porch," he said. "You better be out there in the next five minutes."


	28. Three Things

**Chapter Twenty-Eight**

When Eric stepped out onto the back porch, his father was sitting in one the folding chairs by the outdoor table, his unlit cigar flat on the table next to the ashtray and lighter. Just waiting.

Eric sat down across from him. The sky was clear and the porch light cast a soft glow.

Mr. Taylor reached for his water glass, took one sip while looking directly at Eric, and then set it down. Most men drank liquor with their cigars, but not Eric's father.

Mr. Taylor took his sweet, silent time cutting the cigar and lighting it. He must have taken at least three leisurely puffs before he finally spoke. "Two things," he said. "The first is this fight you got into at school today."

Eric swallowed.

"Did you start it?"

"No, sir."

"How did it start?"

"I…well, the truth is, I'm kind of seeing Tami."

"I'm aware, Eric. I'm not an idiot. I don't know who you two thought you were fooling. Certainly not me. Not your mother. And not Tami's mother either."

Eric didn't know any of them knew. He and Tami hadn't told anyone.

"And?" His father arched his neck back and blew a string of smoke into the air.

"And Mo saw her kiss me. And then he accused me of telling her he was cheating on her in order to steal her from him. And then he said Green Light. So I…I fought back."

"Green light?"

"It's…it's this stupid thing he does when he's getting ready to hit you."

Mr. Taylor leaned forward and flicked the ash of his cigar into the ash tray. He raised his eyes without raising his head. "Did you give him a shiner too?"

"Uh…I busted his lip."

Mr. Taylor leaned back in his chair again. "Well, at least you held your own."

Eric blinked. That was not the response he'd been expecting. Did this mean he wasn't in trouble?

"Second thing."

Maybe not.

"Your SAT results came today. I opened them."

Damn it. It was as if he had no privacy in this house.

"You got 580 on your math, which is passable, but still at least 70 points lower than I expected. But here's the thing. Your verbal was 400. 400, Eric. That's a combined score of only 980."

_I know. I can add,_ Eric thought, but he remained silent.

"You're capable of better. _Far_ better."

Eric looked off at a tree in the neighbor's yard.

"So what happened?"

"I don't know."

When Eric looked back, his father was setting his cigar down in the ash tray. "_I_ know," Mr. Taylor said. "You're distracted by that girl."

"Dad – yeah, okay. I am! I am distracted by her. Because she's the best thing that ever happened to me."

"Probably."

Another response Eric wasn't expecting.

Mr. Taylor rubbed the bridge of his nose. "You're infatuated with Tami – "

"- I'm not infatuated," Eric said tightly. "I _love_ her."

"You may well love her, son." He dropped his hand to the table. "Only time will tell. But the infatuation will wear off. You won't feel like this forever – like you can't sleep, like you can't think straight. You'll recover from that. This phase will last another five months, tops. Which is why I expect you to do _much_ better on your SAT's next year. Which is why I'm not particularly upset with you."

"You're not?"

"No, I'm not." He picked up his water glass and sipped. When he set it down, he said. "Are you treating her right?"

"Yes, sir."

"Are you having sex with her?"

Eric's mom had sat him down when he was eleven to tell him about the birds and the bees. He already knew, of course, or he thought he did. But his mother, a former nurse, gave him the _clinical_ details, more than he needed to know. She spilled it all out quite matter-of-factly. His father had never talked to him about sex at all, except to say one thing: "You shouldn't have sex until you're married."

"No, sir." He only half felt it was a lie. They _weren't_ having sex, not by the narrow definition that most counted in the locker room, but they sure were fooling around a lot.

Mr. Taylor took another sip of his water. "I didn't have sex with your mother until we were married. Admittedly, that had more to do with her virtue than mine."

Eric did not need to think about his parents having sex, married or otherwise. "Why don't you ever drink?" He hoped the question would get them off this topic.

Mr. Taylor put down his water glass and took up his cigar. "My father was a drunk. Much like Tami's father. Except that he was violent. He beat my mother. I think that's why, when I came home that day and saw you shoving your mother, I lost it. I never did apologize for that."

Was he apologizing now?

"Why did you do that, son?"

This was the conversation they'd never had when it actually happened. Almost two years too late. "She was going to slap me across the face," Eric said. "She'd done it a few times already before then."

Mr. Taylor narrowed his eyes. "Really? Your mother?"

"Yeah. I mean…I said things I shouldn't. I guess I was _trying_ to make her mad. She never…she never talked to me, you know, after it happened. After Debbie died. I thought, if I said those things…she'd be mad enough she'd have to talk to me. But she just slapped me."

His dad looked away. "I didn't know she did that."

"She stopped."

Mr. Taylor took a drag of his cigar. "In nineteen years of marriage, I've never raised a hand to your mother. Not once. I'm sure that sounds like a small thing to you. I'm _glad_ it sounds like a small thing to you. I've never cheated on her either. I hope that, too, sounds like a small thing to you, though neither was a small thing for me."

Eric shifted uncomfortably.

His dad let his hand fall loosely beside his chair. The cigar smoke curled up and then behind his head. "There's a third thing I wanted to talk to you about."

A third thing? He'd said two, hadn't he?

"I moved us here because I thought it might do your mother some good to be out of that house, with all those memories, with the weight of…"

"Debbie," Eric said. He said it deliberately.

His father swallowed. "Yes. And your mother _has_ improved. But your mother has also expressed to me that she misses home. She misses Odessa, and her brother, and her nephews. She wants to move back. What do you think?"

"You're asking _my_ opinion?"

"I am. We'd move in August. So Tami would already be gone from Dillon to college. We wouldn't be moving you any farther away from her than you'd already be."

"I…I don't really have any friends left in Odessa." He'd had friends, but then Debbie had died, and he'd become withdrawn. His fellow teammates had been uncomfortable around him, not sure how to react or what to say. He'd been going through the motions, even with football. His sophomore year had been especially lonely, and his coach had been afraid to give him play time.

"Well, you'd have your cousins. And do you have friends _here_? Besides Tami?"

"Scooter," he said. "Although, he's graduating this year and going to Houston. But I'm going to be QB1 of the Panthers next year. I don't know if I'd get that position on the Bobcats, and, even if I did, the team's not very good."

"Well, you wouldn't be going back to the same high school. We sold the old house, you know. We'd likely buy in the neighborhood of Westfield High." Westfield High had nearly won the state championships last season. "The Warriors are a good team, and I know the coach, back from my AFL days. I know it won't be easy for you, to start over on a new team your third year in the row, but, your mother…she's getting help. She'll continue to get help. And I think, if we went home, there might be a chance…" He swallowed. "…that she could _fully_ return to me."

"I want mom to be happy," Eric said. "But…Would you be able to get your old job back at the Odessa GM?"

"Probably not. But Westfield High has an opening for an Athletic Director. The football coach doesn't want that job. He's happy with just his coaching stipend. With my reputation in management and my history as an athlete, I think I'll get the job quite easily."

"What…what does an athletic director even do?"

"Management," his father said. "It's basically management. Preparing budgets, equipment inventory, seeing regulations are met, overseeing the hiring process for new coaches...all that sort of thing."

That sounded boring to Eric, but it might actually be right up his father's alley. But having to start over again on a new team, with a new coach? "I really like Coach Hamilton. I feel like he's taught me a lot this year."

"You'll like Coach O'Donnell too."

"Tami will be home for college breaks, though, in Dillon."

"If you're still together by then, you can invite her to spend breaks with us in Odessa. It might be slightly more interesting than Dillon. And she doesn't need her father harassing her for money anyway."

"Will Mrs. Hayes get to keep her job when you're no longer manager of the Dillon GM?"

"She's good at her job. I'm sure the new manager will keep her on."

Eric thought for a moment. "Okay," he said. "If that's what you and Mom want, I guess it would be okay."

His father nodded, stubbed out his cigar, and stood up. Before he disappeared inside, he said, "Don't get that girl pregnant."

**[*]**

When Eric came inside from the back porch and went to the kitchen for a glass of water, he saw that the answering machine, which he had bypassed quickly on his way to hideout in his room after work, was registering three messages. They were all from Tami. The first was, "This message is for Eric. This is Tami. Call me back when you get home." Then it was, "Eric, this is Tami, are you home from work yet? I got my SAT scores." Then it was "Hi. Just Tami again. Just wanted to…share the news. Hope you're okay."

He glanced at the clock. 10:05. He'd called once at 10:01 and Mrs. Hayes had scolded him for being inconsiderate of the quiet hours of her house. "Please don't call again after 10:00," she'd said, and she had not allowed him talk to Tami.

He certainly didn't want a scolding, but he didn't want Tami to think he didn't care about how she'd done either. So he pulled out the kitchen desk chair, sat down, picked up the phone, and dialed. _Please let Tami answer_, he thought. _Please don't let her mother answer_.

Her mother answered with an irritated, "Hayes residence."

"Mrs. Hayes," he hastened, "I know it's late, and I apologize for that, but I didn't see Tami's messages, and I know she got her SAT scores, and I do apologize, I know it's late, but ma'am, if you could just let me talk to her for one moment please."

There was silence.

"Ma'am. Please."

"You _are_ a polite young man, Eric Taylor. I appreciate that about you. So I'm surprised you'd call after 10:00 when you'd already been asked once not to do so. Please don't do so again."

It sounded as if she was putting the phone down to hang it up. "Ma'am, please - Mrs. Hayes, ma'am"

"Eric?"

He breathed a sigh of relief to hear Tami's voice.

"Did you enjoy my mother's tongue lashing?" she asked.

"Not as much as you enjoy mine." He was thinking of all the French kissing they'd done, but there was another type of tongue lashing he'd like to try. He wondered if she'd let him if he asked the next time they were fooling around, but then he thought maybe he should wait for her to ask him.

Tami chuckled.

"So. How did you do?" he asked.

"I did fine," she said modestly.

"Fine? Did you get at least 1180?" That was the minimum Mrs. Mason thought she needed to compensate for her low cumulative GPA.

"At least," she said, sounding highly satisfied.

"Yeah? What did you get?"

"I might of gotten 1300."

"1300! That's awesome, Tami!"

"I got 720 on the verbal. So, how did you do?"

"Uh…" He toyed with the cord of the phone. "Not _quite_ as good as you."


	29. Prom Night

**Chapter 29**

"That one does _not_ show enough cleavage," Shelley insisted, tugging on the dark green fabric of the dress that hung from the rack.

Tami seriously needed a female friend. Girls didn't hate her – she never came on to their boyfriends and she'd managed to get elected Homecoming Queen – but she wasn't close to any girl. She hadn't had a good female friend since tenth grade, and that girl had moved out of town.

"Girls shop for dresses together," Shelley had insisted. "And since you don't have anyone to shop with, you _have_ to bring me. You _have_ to!"

"Bring her," Tami's mom had said. "Tami, please just bring your sister to shut her up."

"Shelley," Tami said now, "You're in 7th grade! You shouldn't be thinking about cleavage."

"Ooooh!" Shelley exclaimed, running her hand over a skimpy, dark red, obnoxiously sequined gown.

"No." Tami shook her head. "Just no."

**[*]**

"What do you think?" Eric asked Scooter, pulling the dark, formal suit out of his closest. "It was pretty big on me when I wore it to my sister's funeral, so it should fit well now. My mom had to hem the pants then. She could just let out the hem now."

"Man, that's morbid. You're gonna take your girl to prom in a suit you wore to a funeral?"

"Well, I'm not gonna _tell_ her that." He looked at the suit. He'd worn it only the one time. His church suit was too light. "I can't just rent a tux. I've got to get the corsage, and take her to a nice dinner, and rent a limo - "

"- How's your mom gonna feel when you hand her that and say – hey, would you let out the hem on the suit I wore to your dead daughter's funeral?"

"Maybe she'll think it's nice to put it to happier use."

"Maybe you're an idiot."

Eric laughed and put the suit back in the closet. "Maybe."

"Come on," Scooter said, "Rent a tux." He played an air guitar and sang, "'Cause every girl's crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man!" Scooter was quite the ZZ Top fan. "You and my date can split the cost of the limo."

"You got a date?"

"Ooooh, Eric!" Scooter put a hand over his heart. "That hurts!"

"Sorry." Scooter was a truly nice guy, funny and smart. But he was big, really big, and it wasn't all muscle. "Who is she?"

"My cousin."

Eric laughed.

"Nah, it's Missy McElfresh. She said she'd go with me. Just as friends. But she's going."

"You'll be more than friends by the end of it," Eric reassured him.

**[*]**

Eric did rent a tux, but he and Scooter didn't split a limo after all. There was no limo rental service in Dillon, and the limited number of limos available in the next larger town over had driven up the price to a point that made Eric queasy. Tami told him a limo would be ostentatious anyway. "Ostentatious," she said. "Adjective. Flashy, affected, pretentious, showy. That wasn't even on the test."

Instead, Eric's father let him have temporary use of that Pontiac Firebird Tami had admired the first time she stepped into the showroom. The afternoon of the prom, he went to the dealership and washed and vacuumed and waxed the car. He even sprayed it with a little air freshener for good measure.

"Quite the chariot," Buddy Garrity told him. "I brought my date in my Camaro. Jessica Collette. I wonder whatever happened to her," Buddy mused. "Moved out of town I guess. She had a younger sister I think." Buddy sighed. "Well, I'm getting married this summer. Guess it's time to put all that behind me, huh?"

"Probably should," Eric muttered.

"You got yourself a little hot one tonight though, huh?"

Eric looked at him warily.

Buddy laughed and slapped him on the back. "Sow your oats, young friend! Sow 'em while you still can. Because eventually, those girls start trying to lock you up. Make sure you get all that out of your system now. Because when it's just one….the same one….for the rest of your life…." Buddy sighed and shook his head.

Eric thought maybe Buddy shouldn't be getting married, if that's how he already felt about it, but he didn't say anything.

**[*]**

Tami was gorgeous in her strapless, dark blue gown. Mrs. Hayes took what must have been a hundred pictures, which kind of surprised Eric, since Tami hadn't been allowed to openly date until now.

Shelley hung around watching. She jumped into the picture a couple of times. "Do one of me and Eric," she said at one point.

"What's wrong with your sister?" Eric asked after they got into the Firebird.

"Do you want the whole list, or just the highlights?"

He took Tami to his house next, because his mom wanted pictures too. They got to see them right away, because Eric's dad had bought his mom one of those fancy Polaroids.

Eric took Tami to dinner at the one sit-down restaurant in town, which was packed with other prom couples, and then they headed to the dance.

**[*]**

Despite Eric's reassurance, Scooter and Missy were _not_ more than friends by the end of prom, but Missy and Tami _were_ friends by the end of it. In fact, a couple of times they went off to the bathroom together and didn't come back for half an hour, leaving Scooter and Eric to hang out nervously by the punch bowl, talking football and Eric's college prospects.

"My dad expects me to go to UT-Austin, because that's where he went, but I want to go to A&M," Eric told him.

"Yeah, but if you go to A&M, you'll have to see Mo all the time."

"True."

"University of Houston is a good school too," Scooter insisted.

"Man, no offense, because you're not going there for football, but you know …"

"Hey, the Cougars are up and coming. Besides, at A&M or UT, you're probably not going to be first string. No offense. But better to be _the_ big fish in a small pond. Plus what if Tami goes to MWU? UH is like twenty minutes away. A&M is an hour and a half. Austin's well over two hours."

Eric sipped his punch. "You think…you think she'll still be with me by then?"

"Don't you want her to be?"

"Yeah. Yeah. _I_ do. But…you think she will?"

"Man, that girl is crazy about you." Scooter nodded to the other side of the cafeteria. "Here they come." He straightened his tie, which did not extend fully over his round gut. "How do I look?"

Eric laughed. "Fantastic, man. Just fantastic."

Then Eric caught sight of Tami, who really _did_ look fantastic, her smile warm and bright.

"Is that for me?" she asked when she approached, taking the punch from his hand. "Hmmm…." She said after sipping. "I can't believe no one's spiked it yet."

Scooter leaned in and whispered, "Don't tell her. Just let her believe that."

Eric did tell her, because he knew Tami did not like to get drunk. She'd have a beer every now and then, but she wouldn't drink until she was drunk. Over the course of their future marriage, she would become a regular wine drinker, but he'd still be able count on two hands the number of times he'd seen her _really_ drunk. Well, two hands and one foot.

Tami and Eric slow danced cheek to cheek three times. They watched Mo and Mary Ellen named prom King and Queen, but generally avoided being anywhere near the couple. Mo circled Eric and Tami at one point during the evening, looked Eric up and down, and said, "If I didn't want to mess up my suit…"

"You'd actually try to dance correctly?" Scooter asked.

Mo glared at Scooter, but he walked away. No one ever tried to fight Scooter. It would be like trying to move a boulder.

Missy and Tami fast danced to "Beat It" and "Footloose" while Scooter and Eric lingered on the sidelines and watched. The girls tried to get them involved, but they refused.

"Eric only slow dances," Tami told Missy. "But he's pretty good at that."

**[*]**

Eric made sure he had Tami back fifteen minutes before her ridiculous curfew. Mrs. Hayes seemed to like him for some strange reason, and he wasn't going to ruin that. He pulled alongside the curb and turned off the car.

"I had a really good time," Tami said. "I mean, I really did. I'm glad you talked me into it."

He leaned over and kissed her. Their tongues tangled for a little while, until the porch light came on. Tami was the first to pull away. "I'm sorry we didn't get too…you know…at least fool around a little."

Not as sorry as he was. A lot of the guys on the team had gotten motel rooms. It seemed everyone was having sex tonight except him. And who knew when he _would_ lose his virginity. What if Tami went away to college without letting him go all the way?

_You'll survive, that's what will happen_, he told himself.

"That's okay," he said. "I'm glad you had fun."

She started to open her door.

"Wait!" He came around and opened it for her and walked her up her walkway.

Mrs. Hayes opened the front door, glanced at her watch, and said, "Right on time, young Mr. Taylor."

**[*]**

"You actually like Eric, don't you?" Tami asked when she'd closed the door. Her mother had freaked out about boys for so long, that Tami had always kept her dating life secret. She'd lied and snuck and pretended she never dated anyone.

"Well, you know I work for his father. Mr. Taylor is a hardworking, honest, and respectable man. He's sincerely religious, even if it's of that – " she waved a hand dismissively in the air, "- Catholic variety. And he's a fair and generous employer. So I figure he's probably raised Eric with the same values. And Eric's certainly better than that Mo fellow you were dating before."

She knew about Mo?

Shelley came clattering down the stairs in her flannel PJs. "How many times did he slow dance with you?" she asked.

"You're supposed to be in bed, sweetheart," Mrs. Hayes said. Then she sighed. "Fine, Shelley, you can stay up for another hour. Go pop some popcorn. Tami can tell us all about it."


	30. Tami's First

**Chapter 30**

**[May]**

Eric didn't work on Fridays, but Tami usually did, so he was surprised to get a call that afternoon. "Meet at our usual spot," she said. "I need to talk to you. In person."

If they'd been having actual sex, he'd be afraid she was going to announce she was pregnant. The last time he'd asked if she wanted him to buy condoms, however, she'd said, "Not for a while yet, sugar. I'll give you advanced notice though. Don't you worry."

Even though he knew she couldn't be pregnant, he was a little nervous about this "in person" talk when he parked his pick-up next to hers in the woods.

"What's wrong?" he asked as she walked to where she was leaning against her truck.

She tugged on his hand and led him back into the clearing by the lake. She proceeded to run toward the water, twirling as she ran, arms up, shouting, "I did it! I got into college!"

He ran full force after her, grabbed her up in his arms, and swung her around. Laughing, he set her back on her feet. He kissed her and said, "I knew you would! Which one?"

"Both of them!"

"TMU and MWU? Well…where are you going?" He hoped TMU. MWU was farther away, near Houston, over a seven and a half hour drive from Odessa.

"I haven't decided yet. TMU's closer to Odessa, but MWU has _such_ a good psychology program. But I'm in! I'm in!" She laughed, kicked off her shoes, and ran fully clothed into the lake, where she splashed with joy. He pulled off his shoes and shirt and came running after her. They stood up to their chests in the rippling lake water, holding one another and kissing and laughing and smiling. "I love you," he said through his happy laughter. "I'm so proud of you, Tami."

She put a hand on each of his cheeks. "You know what?" she said. "I'm proud of me too." Then she urged him back toward the trucks.

They hung their clothes up to dry from the branches of a tree, all but their underwear. When they were making out half-naked in the bed of his pick-up, on the rolled out sleeping bag, she murmured, "Kiss me…please…kiss me."

"I am," he breathed.

"No…I mean…" She pushed his head downward. "Eric…please….do what I do to you…"

He slid down her panties.

**[*]**

Later, as they lay curled atop the sleeping bag, she said, "You know, you're the first guy that's ever done that to me."

"Really?" he asked. He knew she'd gone "all the way" with Mo, so he just assumed they'd done everything in between. It made him feel a little bit proud to think he was her first at _something_. She'd been his first at almost everything, and, if she ever let him go all the way, she'd be his _real_ first.

"Yeah. Mo never volunteered, and….I don't know. I was too timid to ask for some reason."

"_You?_ _Timid?_"

"I don't know. It was different with Mo. _I_ was different with Mo. I can't explain. You bring out all the confidence in me. I thought I was confident before…but so much of it was just posturing. With you, I'm confident doing and saying what I _really_ want, whatever that is. I don't just mean sexual stuff."

He squeezed her close. "You make me feel like I can be myself too. And like…I don't know. Like maybe I can figure out who I want to be."

**[Monday]**

When Tami met Eric at lunch time and they stepped under the bleachers, there was already another couple making out there. Eric looked mortified and Tami giggled, and they both turned and walked quickly away.

"We could go over to the visitor's side," he suggested hopefully.

Tami took his hand and tugged. "Actually, I really just want to talk."

She could tell from his crestfallen features that wasn't what he'd wanted to hear, but he made no complaint, at least not out loud.

Soon they were back by the school building, sitting side by side on the grass and leaning back against the brick wall. "Mrs. Mason called me into her office this morning," Tami said. "You remember that speech competition I sent that tape into?"

He nodded.

"Well, they chose my cassette."

"That's great, babe."

She smiled. He'd starting calling her "babe" last week, and it had stuck. She didn't mind it. It was a considerably improvement on "baby cakes" or "hottie" or any of Mo's old names.

"Anyway," she said, "I'm going to compete live next Saturday in Dallas. They're putting the competitors up in a hotel Friday and Saturday night, two to a room. There's going to be some super long banquet luncheon Saturday where we all give our speeches. We have to pay for our own travel and other meals. Will you drive down with me and watch me compete? You'd have to get your own hotel room, though."

"Of course I'll come. Your mom's okay with me driving with y'all?"

"My mom's not coming."

"Doesn't she want to see you compete?"

"I don't want to tell her, Eric. The speech I'm going to be giving…I think it would embarrass her. I talk about where I'm coming from and where I want to go, and so…I talk about my dad some. I don't want her to have to hear all that. I don't want her there. I just want _you_ there. I'm going to tell her I'm going to tour MWU so I can decide if I'm going there. Couldn't you tell your parents you're going camping with Scooter or something?"

She expected Eric to agree to this readily, so she was surprised by his concerned expression.

"Your mom works for my dad," he said. "They probably talk about us at work. You don't think they'll put two and two together? When we're both gone the same weekend?"

"Frankly, I don't care if they do. I'm 18 now." Her fall birthday had just missed the old cut-off for kindergarten, and so she was a few months older than most other seniors. Still, she was closer in age to her peers than Eric was to his fellow juniors. He had a summer birthday, but his parents had held him back from kindergarten. His father thought the extra year would give him an advantage in football, so Eric had been 17 his entire junior year. "I need you there." She'd never done anything like this before…not since seventh grade, and that was a much smaller competition. "Will you go with me or not?"

"I don't want to lie to my parents about something like that. I can't be gone an entire weekend and they don't even know where I am."

"Lord! You can be such a goody two-shoes sometimes, Eric. I just…I just want you to support me."

"I _do_ support you, Tami. I _will_ support you. But I can't lie about something like that!" His voice was rising now, anxiously. "What if they needed to reach me?"

"Why would they need to reach you?"

"What if somebody died?" He sounded angry and upset all at once. "And they tried to reach me and I wasn't where I said I be!" He was swallowing, like there was something stuck in his throat. He stared intently at the ground. His teeth were clenched too.

"Hey," she said softly and a put a hand at the back of his neck, her fingers in his hair. "Does this have something to do with Debbie?" After that first time, she'd never again asked him how his sister had died. She asked about his sister, but always little question like, What was her favorite movie? What was her favorite flavor of ice cream? What do you miss most about her?

He jerked his head free of her hand and pulled his knees up to his chest. He rested his chin on them and closed his eyes. She knew he was trying to get control of himself, so she just waited. Eventually he opened his eyes again and stretched back out his legs.

He didn't look at her, but he talked. "I wanted to go to this big weekend carnival near San Antonio. This guy from the team was going to drive, it was just gonna be me and three other guys, and we were going to stay with somebody's cousin. I asked three weeks in advance and my dad said no, that it was too far, too long, I needed to study. Then he forgot about it. This Catholic youth retreat came up the same weekend, so I told them I was going on that. But I didn't. I went with the guys to San Antonio instead. We left early Saturday morning. Maybe three hours after we left, Debbie went to ride her bike over to her friend's."

Tentatively, Tami reached out a hand to cover one of his. She wasn't sure if he wanted to be touched. He just let her hand lie there.

"There was this railroad crossing on the way," he continued. "I guess she thought she could beat the train, you know?" He glanced at her and then he looked away. "She didn't beat it." He brought a hand to his mouth and wiped it across his lips. When it had fallen to the grass again, he said. "My parents called the retreat center looking for me, but I wasn't there. It wasn't until that night that my dad remembered what I'd asked to do that weekend. So he called Hunter's mom, and she gave him the number of Hunter's cousin where we were staying, but it was late and no one heard the phone ring and he didn't have an answering machine. We left real early the next morning to drive back. I didn't find out until I got home Sunday afternoon."

"Oh, Eric." Tami couldn't help it. She reached out and hugged him hard.

He leaned his head against hers. "I was joking in the car on the way to San Antonio when she was hit by that train. I was playing stupid games and riding rides at a carnival when she was in the hospital dying." His breath was uneven, his words choked. "I…I was just…driving home…laughing with those guys…and she'd been dead, Tami, she'd been dead _hours_ already. And I didn't even know." He turned his face in toward her neck and wept.

Tami held him tightly and rocked. Some girls walked by on their way into class, looked at them, whispered to each other, and laughed. Tami wanted to claw their eyes out.

"Shhh….." she said. "I'm here."

After a minute, he grew still, but he stayed there with his face still buried. When he sat up again, his cheeks were wet and red and blotched. He lifted the bottom of his shirt up to wipe them. "I'm sorry," he said.

"Sugar, don't be sorry." She wiped beneath her own eyes with her thumb. She'd cried a little too.

He took a shaky breath. "We're late for class. I can't go in like this."

"Then don't." She slid an arm around his waist, scooted over until she was hip to hip with him, and bent to kiss his shoulder. "Just stay here with me for a while."

He turned his head and kissed her lips. Forehead to forehead, he said, "I want to stay with you forever, Tami."


	31. Parental Permission

**Chapter 31**

That evening, over the dinner table, Tami told her mother about the upcoming competition and explained why she didn't want her to come.

At first, Mrs. Hayes insisted on coming anyway. "I'm proud of you, Tami, of all that you've accomplished this year. I want to see you win this thing!"

"Mom, I appreciate that. I really do. But I have to be honest…I'm not going to feel comfortable with you in the audience. With what I have to say about Dad, it's just going to make me nervous to know you're hearing all that, and I'm not going to do a good job with the speech. I'm not trying to hurt your feelings. Please try to understand."

A _huff_ escaped her mother's nostrils. Then Mrs. Hayes pushed her plate away. "Fine, Tami, if that's really how you feel."

Tami braced herself for a larger reaction to her next words: "Eric's going to go with me."

Mrs. Hayes cleared her throat. "Shelley, dear, will you please take your plate to the sink? And then you may go watch television."

"And miss whatever excitement's about to go down here?" Shelley said. "I don't think so."

"Plate. Sink. Now." When Mom got that stern staccato going, her daughters got moving. Shelley was out of the kitchen in under a minute.

Tami's mom looked straight at her. "Do you really think I'm going to let you go alone to a big city and stay in a hotel for two nights with your boyfriend?"

"We'll get separate rooms, Mom. The sponsors of the competition are putting all the competitors up in hotel rooms. I'll have a _female_ roommate. Eric will get his _own_ room."

"His own room, unsupervised, in a hotel where you're also staying." Mrs. Hayes stood up and seized her plate. She went to the sink and the plate clattered in.

Shelley popped her head back into the kitchen. "Do you need me to wash the dishes?" she asked.

"Out. Now!" Mrs. Hayes insisted, and Shelley skittered away.

Tami's mom returned to the table and sat down. She took a moment to calm herself. Then she said, "You know I like Eric, Tami. He's a hard-working young man. He's polite. He's respectful. He goes to church three times a week, even if it's…you know. _Catholic_."

Tami toyed with her fork, which she'd rested on her napkin beside her near empty plate.

"And he brought out some things in you, Tami, that honestly, I'd forgotten you had. So I like him. I do. But putting yourselves in a situation like that – it's too much temptation."

"Well, Mom," Tami said, quietly and deliberately, "I appreciate your concern for me and for my virtue. But I'm eighteen years old now. I can make this decision for myself. I'm going to let Eric drive me to the speech competition, and you're just going to have to trust me to make the decision that's right for me."

Her mother sighed. "You're still living under my roof."

"I don't have to be. I have a part-time job. I can find a roommate or two. I can live at that apartment complex dad – "

"- That flea bag half motel? No! You're not living anywhere near your father or a place like that. You're living here until you go to college." Mrs. Hayes pushed her chair back with a loud scrape on the kitchen tile. "I see you're going to do what you like," she said as she stood. "Fine. Do what you like. Please just don't get yourself pregnant."

Mrs. Hayes began to walk away. When she reached the refrigerator, she stopped and turned. "One day, Tami, you'll understand what it's like to be a mother. One day, you'll be standing across from your own daughter, and she won't have lived the years you've lived, and she won't have seen the things you've seen, but she'll still tell you that you have to trust her, that _she_ _knows_ what's best, and _then_ you'll understand."

"I'll be completely different with my daughter. I'll _always _trust her judgment for herself."

Tami's mother laughed.

Shelley popped her head back into the kitchen. "What's so funny in here?"

**[*]**

"Could you please pass the potatoes?" Eric asked.

His father passed the bowl to his mother who passed it to him. Father and son sat at opposite heads of the rectangular table, while Mrs. Taylor sat on the left. The right side was always empty, though Mom still sometimes put a place mat down, as though she'd forgotten.

"Maybe we should get a circular table," his father said. "What do you think, Betty? When we move back to Odessa? Sell this one before we go, and buy a circular table?"

Eric dished more potatoes onto his plate.

His mother began to hum. Then she began to sing, quietly, "_Will the circle be unbroken, by and by Lord, by and by…_"

It had been long time since Eric had heard her sing. She'd been going to mass with them again, but her voice melded with the other parishioners. It didn't stand out in the silence as now. He'd almost forgotten what a beautiful voice she had.

She trailed off. "I like the idea," she said. "I want a glass top though."

"Whatever your heart desires, my love," his father replied.

His parents seemed to be in a good mood. This was probably the best opportunity he was going to get to raise the topic, so Eric plunged into his rehearsed speech: "Mom, Dad, Tami is a finalist in a speech competition. She has to give the speech at an event in Dallas. I'd like to accompany her. I would drive with her there Friday after school. We'd stay in a hotel for the night, in separate rooms. We'd go to the competition, maybe see a few sights, stay the night, and drive back Sunday morning. I can leave you the number of the hotel, and I'll call you when I've checked in and when I've checked out."

His father took his napkin out of his lap, set it on the table, and rested his hand on it. "You'd miss Sunday mass. Sunday is obligatory."

Eric _could_ point out that his mother had missed almost two years of Sunday mass, but he didn't. "I'll find a church in Dallas and go before we start the drive back."

"Separate rooms?" his father asked.

"Yes, sir."

His father looked at his mother. "What do you think, my love?"

"I think, James, that you and I should go to Dallas the same weekend, and stay in the same hotel, in the room right next to Eric's."

Eric's face grew ashen.

There was a rumble from the head of the table – a low, deep, laugh mounting from within his father and spilling out – and then something almost like a giggle from Eric's mother.

When he was done laughing, Mr. Taylor took Mrs. Taylor's hand and squeezed. "Or…as an alternative," he said, "I could take you to Corpus Christi, my dear. You used to love the beach."

Eric's mom titled her head. "But I think Eric would miss us terribly in Dallas."

"Probably," his father agreed. "He'll just have to find alternate uses for his time. As will we."

**[*]**

Later that night, there was a knock on Eric's bedroom door. He put his pencil down, closed his Trigonometry book, and opened the door.

His father stepped in, absently tapped his fingertips on the desk, and while looking around at Eric's posters, asked, "Is Tami on the pill?"

"Uh…no….but we're not having sex."

"Really?"

"She's not ready yet." Eric winced. He should have said he wasn't ever going to have sex outside of marriage. That's what his father _wanted_ to hear after all.

His father tapped the desk again, this time with his knuckles. Then he looked Eric in the eyes. "Women are to be respected," he said. "Don't pressure her."

"Yes, sir."

Mr. Taylor left, closing the door behind himself.


	32. I Think We Should Have Sex

**Chapter 32**

**[Friday]**

Eric and Tami left straight from school to head to Dallas. They drove his truck. His tank was only a quarter full when they left, so he soon pulled into a gas station. "I'm going to run in and put $10 down on the pump," he said. "You want anything while I'm in there? A coke or something?"

"Get me one of those orange creamsicles if they have them."

He nodded and opened the truck's door.

"Oh, and while you're in there," she said as his foot hit the pavement, "grab some condoms. Three or four."

He half tripped out of the truck.

She lowered her sunglasses and peered at him. "You okay, sugar?"

"Uh-huh…" he said, straightening himself up and dusting himself off. "Yeah, I'm good."

Once in the mart, he grabbed her orange creamsicle, a root beer for himself, and then casually roamed the store until he finally spied the condoms. They were behind the front counter, next to the cigarettes, in a glass case, under lock and key. Hell. Why did they do that? As if it wasn't humiliating enough.

Eric slapped the cokes up on the counter. Thank God there was no one else in the mart at the moment, and at least the guy behind the counter wasn't some stern, older man. He looked to be in his early twenties. "Just these," Eric said, staring at the money he was pulling out of his wallet, "and $10 on pump 2, and a box of condoms."

"What size?"

"Excuse me?" muttered Eric, not looking up.

"Size. We got snug, standard, and large."

"Uh…standard."

"What kind of condoms?" the cashier asked.

"Uh…Durex I guess."

"Well, Durex is all we got. I mean…you want lubricated regular? Lubricated ribbed? Non-lubricated regular? Non-lubricated ribbed? What?"

"Uh…" Eric glanced out the window toward the gas pump. Tami was leaning against the hood of his truck. She had a cassette tape that had apparently been eaten by the player, and she was using a pencil to wind the tape back in. "Just…just….give me one of each."

"Damn, man! There's like twelve in a box. That's like….um….forty? fifty?"

Eric turned back to him.

"Anyway, a lot," the cashier concluded. Then he glanced out the window where Eric had been looking. "Oh, man, is that your girlfriend? Oh man, she is hot. I mean she is bitchin'."

"What?"

"Bitchin' hot. Damn, man." The cashier shook his head and went over to the case and removed four boxes of condoms. "How old is she?"

"Excuse me?"

"Heh heh. Man. Sorry. Don't look so pissed off." He rang up everything. "That'll be $32.40."

"What?" Eric asked. He had pulled out a ten and two fives.

"$32.40."

Eric peered in his wallet. He'd only brought $80 for the entire weekend. His dad had let him pre-pay for the hotel room on his credit card, but there'd be more gas and meals. "Okay. I'll put back the root beer. And put back the unlubricated ones I guess."

"So…just the lubricated regular and the lubricated ribbed and the orange coke and the ten dollars on the pump?"

"Yeah," Eric muttered.

"Okay, that's $21.10."

Eric rubbed his eye. "You know what? Just the…just the regular lubricated."

"Man, she's totally worth the money. Get both."

Eric was too embarrassed to be angry. "Fine. Both." He threw three tens on the counter.

"You want a bag for that?"

"Yes!"

When he got back to the truck he handed Tami the bottle of orange creamsicle and then walked around to the hatch. He buried the bag of condoms in his travel bag and zipped it back up. He didn't want Tami to see how many he'd bought. Then he jammed the nozzle in the tank and started pumping. He rested with one hand against the truck and looked off toward the highway.

Tami came around the front of the truck. She leaned against the driver's side. "You're a little red in the face," she teased.

"It's…hot." It was. It was already 89 degrees, and it was only May. Summer was going to be brutal this year.

"You didn't get yourself something to drink?" She took a swig of the orange liquid.

"I'm not thirsty." The pump clicked off.

"You can have a sip of mine," she said and then got back into the passenger's seat.

As Eric started driving away from the pump, the cashier ambled out of the mart and gave two thumbs up in his direction.

"What was that about?" Tami asked.

"I have no idea," he lied.

She kicked off her sandals, scooted back the seat, and put her bare feet up on the dash. "I'm not sure we'll need the condoms," she said. "I'm not sure I'm quite ready."

Then why the hell had she put him through that? He was glad he had sunglasses on to mask his irritation.

"I wanted you to have them just in case," she continued. "Just in case it comes to that. I don't know if it will. I just want the option, you know?"

Eric grunted, pushed the cassette tape into the player, and turned on the stereo. As U2 started singing "Sunday Bloody Sunday," the tape was ground up by the player.

**[*]**

They stopped for lunch at a Dairy Queen. Eric paid for their meals, which left him with $52.10.

"Let's get ice cream," Tami suggested when they were finishing up their burgers. "I'm so nervous about this competition. Sugar always helps when I'm nervous."

He smiled. "I'll give you some sugar." He leaned over the table and kissed her.

"You help too," she whispered. She leaned back. "But I need a _large_ chocolate dipped cone. Are you getting anything?"

He pulled out is wallet. "Uh…no…." He'd have about $51 left after he bought her cone. He tried to calculate how far that would get him. Gas would probably be another $15 before they made it all the way home. They'd get the free banquet lunch, but they'd need to buy dinner Friday and Saturday night, and breakfast and lunch Sunday. He supposed they'd be home by dinner time. She might want a coke on the drive back. And then they'd be doing something Saturday evening, a museum or a movie or something. Four meals, snacks, gas, entertainment…The gears were turning as he tried to calculate it all.

"Eric, sugar, you don't expect to pay for _everything_ this weekend do you? I'm getting the ice cream. And of course I'll pay for the gas on the way home. So what do you want?"

"Oh." He set his wallet on the table. Jennifer had always expected him to pay on their dates. She didn't have a job. He'd started mowing lawns when he was eleven, delivering newspapers when he was twelve, and working for his father when he was fourteen. He'd had to get a special work permit for that. Jennifer had never volunteered to chip in, and he just figured that's how it was done. "In that case…I guess I'll get a chocolate dipped too."

**[*]**

They arrived at the hotel at 9:55 PM. Eric insisted on self-parking. No way he was going to have to tip a valet. He checked in after Tami, who waited for him leaned against a pillar in the hotel lobby.

Eric came over to her when he had his key and said, "So…uh….did you want to hang out some more?" _Say you want to have sex. Please say you want to have sex._

"I think I better meet my roommate. She apparently checked in at 8."

"Uh…oh. Okay."

"What's your room number?"

"323," he said.

"So…when my roommate's asleep…I'll sneak on over." She smiled.

He smiled. Did this mean he was going to need those condoms after all? God he hoped so.

**[*]**

Tami's roommate Beth was a chatterbox. She hoped the girl would go to bed soon. She _really_ wanted to get over to Eric's room. He'd been so sweet and cute all day, thinking he had to pay for everything, blushing like mad when he bought those condoms, opening doors for her everywhere they went.

Tami changed into her sweats, crawled into bed, and told the girl she was "exhausted, totally exhausted." Beth finally followed her lead and shut off the light, but then she kept talking.

Tami considered just telling her directly she was going to spend the night with her boyfriend and leaving, but she didn't want rumors flying all over the competition tomorrow. That would be distracting. Better to be discrete. Beth would have to nod off soon, wouldn't she?

Beth did fall asleep, within the next ten minutes. Unfortunately, Tami fell asleep within five, lulled by the incessant murmur of Beth's voice.

**[*]**

Eric, who was lying in bed, flipped another channel on the TV. This remote control thing was pretty cool, as was the cable television. At his house, they still had to get up to change the channels, and he was constantly fiddling with the rabbit ears every time he moved from station to station.

He'd already taken two of each kind of condom out and put them in the drawer of the nightstand, so they'd be within easy reach, and so it wouldn't look like he was expecting to get laid twenty-four times this weekend. He'd put them right next to the Gideon Bible. He'd felt a little guilty doing it.

He glanced at the clock for the third time in the past three minutes. It was 11:29 now. What was taking her so long?

He flipped channels for another ten minutes before deciding to call her room. The problem was, she hadn't told him her room number. So he called the front desk.

"There's no one here registered by the name of Tami Hayes," he was told. The room must be under her roommate's name, then. He'd heard Tami checking in. It was Beth something or another.

"Is there a Beth? Can you give me the room for Beth?"

"Last name, sir?"

"Uh….I dunno."

"I'm sorry, I can't help you," the man said tightly. There was a click.

Eric flicked off the TV, got out of bed, and did some push-ups and sit-ups on the floor. It would keep him awake until Tami came, and it distracted him a little bit from the fact that she hadn't come.

Then he got back in bed and tried to read. At one, he decided she probably wasn't coming and turned off the lamp on his nightstand. She'd probably changed her mind. Again.

He tried not to feel angry, but he _did_ feel angry. She could have at least called him. Tami toyed with him too much. He was going to have to tell her he wasn't going to tolerate that anymore.

Then again, he thought, maybe he shouldn't be issuing ultimatums. Tami was more experienced than he was, far more confident when it came to dealing with the opposite sex. She'd be going off to college in three months, and he'd still be in high school. She'd be surrounded by nineteen, twenty, twenty-one year old guys who were more suave than he was, who could do more to impress her, who would be in her classes, at the same parties she went to…She'd be in a completely different world, and she might start to forget him.

He began to hope she would choose Methodist Women's University instead of Texas Methodist University. At least that way she wouldn't have any guys in her classes. On the other hand, she'd be farther away. He wouldn't be able to visit often. Out of sight, out of mind. And MWU wasn't far from other colleges and other guys.

He put his hands behind his head and stared up at the ceiling in the dark. A little light broke through the window from the city and danced on the white surface. His father had said she could stay with them in Odessa on her breaks, "if you're still together by then…." Apparently his father didn't believe they would be.

And maybe his father was right.

What did Tami see in him, anyway? At least he wasn't a cheater like Mo, but he lacked Mo's easy confidence. He was completely inexperienced when it came to girls. He and Jennifer had never done more than make out a little. He was a good quarterback, but there would be college football players surrounding Tami soon, either at TMU or one of the colleges neighboring MWU. They'd be older, and stronger, and better than him, and they'd chase Tami. They wouldn't stutter around her when they got nervous. They wouldn't need to be "tutored" when it came to sex.

She was going to find someone else. Maybe not immediately, but some time before her first year of college was over, she was going to find somebody else.

Eric closed his eyes and rolled over, but it was a long time before he fell asleep.


	33. Eric's First

**Chapter 33**

Tami bolted up into a sitting position and turned to look at her roommate, who was slamming the alarm clock with the palm of her hand. "Sorry," Beth muttered. "I wanted to work out before the pre-meeting, so I set it super early, but I just can't do it." She rolled over and went back to sleep.

Tami looked at the clock. 6:30 AM. Shit!

She threw back the covers, grabbed her room key, and went straight upstairs in her sweats and bare feet to room 323. She had to pound three times before Eric answered. He was wearing gray sweats and a Dillon Panthers T-shirt and rubbing sleep dust from his eyes. His hair was a wild mess.

"I'm so sorry," she said pushing past him and into the room. "I fell asleep. I was waiting for my stupid roommate to fall asleep, and then _I_ fell asleep. I just woke up."

He yawned and walked in to the room. She was standing by the TV. He sat on the bed. "What time is it?"

"6:30. I'm really sorry, Eric." She came and sat down next to him and kissed his cheek. "Are you mad at me?"

"Not…anymore."

"Why didn't you call?"

"I didn't know your room number. Or your roommate's last name."

She sighed and leaned her head against his. "So what did you think…I just….didn't come?"

He shrugged. "You keep changing your mind."

She pulled away. "What do you mean? Do you think I've been a tease?"

"I didn't say that, Tami. I did _not_ say that."

"I told you from the beginning when we started fooling around that it was going to be a while before we went all the way. I made that clear. Just because I went all the way with Mo doesn't mean I'm required to do it with you, you know. I'm not _required_ to do anything with any guy. I realize that now."

"I never said you were required to do anything, Tami. Jesus. Have I _ever_ pressured you?"

"No. It's one of the things I love about you. But...what do you mean I keep changing my mind?"

"Well, you know, you tell me to buy the condoms, and then when I get in the truck, you say, I'm not sure we'll need them. Then you tell me you're going to come up to my room. Then you don't."

"I fell asleep! I said I was sorry!"

"I know that now. I didn't know last night. So I just assumed you changed your mind again."

"There was never any mind changing, Eric. I never told you we were going to have sex. I just told you to buy the condoms in case we did end up having sex. I didn't _change_ my mind. I just hadn't made it up yet. And so what if I _did_ change my mind? I'm not allowed to do that?"

He put his head in his hands and sighed. "You're allowed to do whatever you want, Tami. And no matter what you do, I'm not going anywhere. I'm already gone."

"What?" she asked, standing up and facing him. "What does that even mean?"

He looked up at her. "It means I'm in love with you. I'm in love with you and…" He shook his head, "I'm going to take whatever you give me, and I'm going to be grateful for it. Even if you're probably just going to break up with me when you go to college."

Her face took on that soft, sympathetic cast it sometimes got, almost as if she was pouting. "Oh, sugar…" She sat down next to him and put an arm around him and settled her chin on his shoulder. "What makes you think I'd break up with you?"

"You'll find someone better. There are a lot of older, more mature guys at college. It's what happens. High school couples never stay together."

"Bullshit. My parents were a high school couple."

He eased out from her arm and half turned to look at her. "Your parents are separated."

"Fine. Terrible example. Your parents then. They were high school sweethearts, right?"

"They met in college. Well, my dad was in college. My mom was in a nearby nursing school. They didn't even go to the same high school."

"I thought you said they got married when they were 19?"

"They did. It was a fast courtship. Like…six months after they started dating, they were married."

"Oh. My parents got married because my mom was pregnant too."

"That's not why. They didn't have me for another year and a half. They got married because they wanted to have sex."

Tami's brow furrowed. "And they couldn't do that without getting married?"

"You know my parents are serious Catholics."

Tami put a hand on his knee. "But you're not, right?" What she really wanted to know was if he was having second thoughts about going all the way.

He shrugged. "Well...I don't believe the part about having sex with a girl you love being a sin just because you aren't married. But…I _do_ take it seriously. Sex, I mean. It's more than just getting laid for me. Tami, I wanna…be really close to you. As close as I can. And…well…I also want to get laid." She laughed. He smiled. "I'm willing to wait as long as you need. Really, I am. I want it to be right for you. I just…I'd like it if you made it clearer what your intentions are when you do things like ask me to buy condoms."

"I thought I did make it clear."

"_After_ I bought them."

She looked down at her hand on his knee.

He took her hand. "Just tell me when it's going to happen before it happens so I can at least grab one."

She smiled and nodded. "I have to be at this pre-meeting thing before the competition at 9:30. So I need to take a shower." She stood and began walking to his bathroom. With her hand on the door sill, she turned and looked back at him sitting on the bed. "Don't you need a shower too?" she asked.

"Yeah. I've got over five hours though. You can use mine now if you want."

She laughed. "Eric, I meant…don't you want to join me?"

"Oh!" He leapt up from the bed.

She shook her head. "I really do need to be clear with you, don't I?"

**[*]**

Tami unraveled her towel and sat naked on the bed. Eric walked toward her from the bathroom. He looked gorgeous with just that one white towel tied around his waist, water dripping slowly down his muscular chest, his thick, dark brown hair matted against his head. Why hadn't she noticed how good-looking he was the first time she'd seen him? She ran her tongue across her lips.

When he was right in front of her, she reached out and hooked a finger inside the top of his towel.

"What are we doing, Tami?" he asked. "Tell me where this is going to end. It's fine, whatever you want. Just tell me first."

"Where'd you put the condoms?"

A wide grin broke out across his face and he jerked open the nightstand drawer. Then he blushed. "Uh…is lubricated okay? That's all I have."

She smiled at his awkwardness. "Sure," she said.

"Uh….ribbed or…uh…regular?"

"Ribbed? What's that?"

He looked back at her in surprise. "You don't know?"

She shrugged. "I was never the one who bought them."

"They have ones that are ribbed, I guess, for…I don't know. Pleasure?"

"It's pretty pleasurable on its own."

"Yeah." He shook his head and laughed. "I mean, I'm assuming."

"Let's try the ribbed," she said. "Just put the packet on the bed so it's within reach. We'll get to it eventually."

He grabbed it out of the nightstand and put it on the pillow. After she lay back on the bed, he put his palms down on either side of her and lowered himself, as if he was doing a push up. He smelled of soap and his mouth tasted faintly of toothpaste when he kissed her, his warm tongue plunging hungrily into her mouth. He dropped to lean on one forearm so he could caress her breast with his free hand. The heat shot through her. "Oh God," she said.

He laughed, the warm, happy, masculine laugh she'd grown to love. "See…" he breathed, "I can make you say it too."

**[*]**

One fine Saturday morning in May, Eric Taylor ceased to be a virgin. He lay contentedly on his back, arms behind his head, Tami snuggled against his side, her head on his chest. He didn't feel the least bit guilty, except that he felt a little bit guilty about the fact that he didn't feel guilty.

"So…" he asked, "…is it better with the ribbed?"

She giggled. Her breath tickled his chest. She kissed the flesh just below his shoulder. "Eric, it's better with _you_."

He smiled. "Then I guess we'll have to try the regular together to see which is better."

"And when I get on the pill, we can try it without."

He took a hand out from under his head and stroked her hair. "You're getting on the pill?"

"I think I should. It'll make things easier long term."

"Long term?" he asked hopefully.

She raised herself up on an elbow and looked in his eyes. "You know this _is_ long-term, right? Are you really not aware I'm crazy in love with you?"

"Well," he said, "you have to be kind of crazy to be in love with me."

"No." She bent her head, kissed his chest, and then looked back in his eyes. "I'd have to be crazy _not_ to be in love with you."


	34. The Speech

**Chapter 34**

Tami was number fourteen out of the twenty speakers. The organizers served a four-course luncheon, the wait staff bustling out between speakers. At least eating gave Eric something to do during the more boring speeches. There were three decent ones before Tami, but most simply didn't interest him. Eric did not care why these people wanted to go to college. After every speaker, he leaned to his left and whispered in Tami's ear, "You'll be better," and she rewarded him with a smile.

Tami looked beautiful when she finally took the podium. She'd chosen a modest spring dress and her hair billowed over her shoulders. She cleared her throat and her face grew serious. He had no idea what she was going to say. This speech she'd kept to herself. He'd offered to let her practice in front of him, but she hadn't wanted to.

"Why I Want to Go to College," she read. None of the other speakers had started with the assigned title. They'd just launched in. Eric thought she was saying it to give herself a chance to gather her nerves. She was looking down at her notes, not at the audience. She cleared her throat again. He prayed she didn't bomb. He'd be there for her if she did, of course, but he prayed she didn't. His own stomach was a nervous knot, and he wasn't even standing at that podium.

Tami swallowed. She closed her eyes for a moment and breathed in. Then she looked at Eric as if he could steady her.

"I was nine years old that Thanksgiving when my father passed out in the mashed potatoes," she said, her voice calm and resonant. Eric could sense the people to the right and left of him perk up. People stopped playing with their food. They set down their water glasses. They leaned back into their chairs. She looked away from Eric, meeting other pairs of eyes one by one as she spoke. "I was ten years old that Christmas he stumbled hiccuping into the Christmas tree, scattering all the handmade ornaments I'd crafted in school those first few innocent years. I was eleven years old that Valentine's Day my mother told him to pack his bags and get out."

She closed her eyes for a moment, opened them, and looked around the audience. "My father was in an out of our lives after that. I watched my single, high school dropout of a mother struggle to raise two kids by herself. She had accomplished so much, and yet she kept taking my dad back in – a night, here, a night there – giving him ten dollars here, twenty dollars there. She couldn't escape him anymore than he could escape his drinking. I watched my parents, and I began to think I must be like them. That whatever dreams I'd had as a little girl, about who I was going to be when I grew up, were just a fantasy. And for years, I simply gave up. I just gave up. I was fortunate to have two people in my life, though, who wouldn't let me give up. The first was my high school guidance counselor, who kept finding excuses to call me into her office. The second was a very good friend who taught me to believe in myself." She looked right at Eric and smiled.

Eric knew it was a cliché, the idea that a smile could light up a room, but Tami made it cease to be a cliché. His return smile was both proud and grateful.

She looked away from him and continued, "The subject of this competition is – Why I Want to Go to College. It might sound like I want to go to college to escape my past – to escape my family and my small home town. But I don't think we can ever truly escape all that, and I'm not sure I would completely want to. I Iove my mother. I love my baby sister, even when she's annoying."

She glanced at Eric, and he looked down at his plate.

"Part of me, in some way, even still loves my father. And even though I find my hometown limiting, there are things I love about it. I don't want to escape those things. Instead, I want to become the kind of person who can transform those things. The way my guidance counselor and my friend helped to transform me. I'm not saying I want to stay in Dillon the rest of my life. I certainly don't. But no matter where I go, a small town or a bustling upscale suburb in some metropolis, I'm pretty sure I'm going to encounter a fair share of brokenness. I don't expect to be a miracle worker, but I want to fix whatever small bit of that brokenness I can. As the poet Alexander Pope once wrote…"

Tami's speech went on for another ten minutes. The applause was noticeable – a little louder than the routine claps that had followed every other presentation. When she sat down again, Eric squeezed her hand.

**[*]**

It was three in the afternoon before the banquet and competition was over, and four before Tami could drag herself from the mingling and conversations that followed it. Eric waited for her in the lobby, ensconced in a chair and reading a biography of Blanton Collier.

He looked up when Tami tapped the cover. "Reading up on football coaches? Thinking about a post-NFL career?" she asked before she sat down in the chair across from him.

"Just killing time. Didn't know how long you'd be in there. You did fantastic. But you know that." He closed up the book and shoved it in his backpack. "So…uh….What do you want to do with the rest of our day?" _Please say sex. Please say sex. Please say sex._

"Well, we should totally walk around Dallas don't you think?"

"_Totally?_" He smirked. "See, you say it too sometimes."

"I'm trying to cut that out. That and the _like_s. "

They went to the Dallas Museum of Natural History and then the Science Place and finally grabbed dinner around 8. As they returned to the hotel, Eric mentally counted his remaining money. $10.25. Good thing Tami was paying for gas on the way back.

He was on the third floor and she was on the sixth. Once they were at the hotel lobby he asked, "So…uh…what floor?" _Please say three. Please say three. Please say three._

"I'm on the sixth."

"Yeah," he muttered, and pressed the buttons for six and three.

"I'll get my stuff and come over," she said as the doors opened and they stepped on. "I should have just done that last night instead of sneaking out. I'm an adult, after all. Eighteen. Who cares what my stranger of a roommate says about me to people I don't even know? I just really hated the whole…slut image, you know? It doesn't take much for people to…" She shook her head.

He kissed her cheek. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry you went through all that." The doors swung open on the third floor. He stepped out. "See you soon?"

She smiled as the doors closed on her.

As Eric walked to his room, he saw a tray of half eaten food outside one of the doors awaiting pickup. There was a little vase on it with a single rose. He snatched the rose. When he got to his room, he straightened up, which really only involved zipping up the gym bag he'd brought and tucking his shoes under the bed. Then he brushed his teeth.

When she knocked, he met her at the door with the rose. "Pretty," she said, taking it from his hand, stepping in, and putting her bag down by the dresser. "Where did you get it?"

"Uh…."

"I know. I saw the tray." She laughed. "It's okay. It was sweet. I appreciate the thought." She lay the rose down on the dresser.

He smiled.

"So…." she said, tilting her head back and forth, "Are you going to ravish me or not?"

He grabbed her by the waist and tossed her, laughing, onto the bed. He lowered himself over her and said, "All night long, babe."

She giggled as he kissed her neck. "What if we run out of condoms?"

"I don't think that's going to be a problem."


	35. Saying Goodbye

**Chapter 35**

**[August]**

Tami and Eric spent their last evening together at Eric's house. Boxes were stacked against the living room and kitchen walls, because the Taylors were already mostly packed for their move back to Odessa. The moving truck would roll in tomorrow afternoon, just in time for Eric to get to summer training. He had already been to Odessa that summer to see the coach of the Westfield Warriors, and it was pretty obvious he was going to be first string quarterback, if not right away, then probably by October.

Tomorrow, Tami would be driving off to MWU. It had been a difficult decision to choose the college that was farther away from Eric, but TMU's psychology program was a fledgling one in those days, while MWU's was well established.

They ordered pizza and ate off of paper plates and drank out of plastic cups. Eric's parents didn't join them. Mr. Taylor said he was taking Mrs. Taylor out to dinner and the movies. Tami almost wondered if he was doing it intentionally, so she and Eric could be alone together, because he was very specific about what time they would be returning.

Tami thought it was cool that Eric's parents still went on dates, after all those years of marriage. She couldn't remember her father ever taking her mother out, even when he was sober. Eric said his parents used to go out once or twice a month before Debbie died, but then his mom had retreated so far into herself, and his dad had thrown himself into his job. It was a good sign, he said, that they were "dating" again.

"I just wish they wouldn't crank up the stereo so loud when they get home."

"What?" Tami asked, refilling her plastic cup with Diet Coke.

"When they get home from date night, they always crank up the stereo in their bedroom."

She laughed. "That's funny."

"What's funny about it?"

"That they don't want you to hear them having sex."

"Ewwww…." he said.

"You are _so_ innocent, Eric." Except he wasn't anymore. Not after a summer with Tami. "That can't be the only time they do it though. That just must be the only time they let themselves get really loud."

"We're not discussing this anymore," Eric insisted, and Tami laughed.

"Didn't your mom already pack the stereo? You better wear ear plugs tonight."

"Stop. Just. Stop." He picked up another slice of pizza.

Later, they went to his bedroom. They made love slowly, tenderly, and a little bit sadly. It would be their last time for a long while. Texas was too big a state: MWU was 500 miles from Eric's new house in Odessa. With Friday night games, and a seven-and-a-half-hour drive each way, he wasn't going to be able to easily hop in the car and come see her on weekends. Besides, she'd be working Saturdays and Sundays to save for when the $5,000 scholarship she'd won at the speech competition ran out.

They planned for him to come to Houston Columbus Day weekend, but that was several weeks away. He wouldn't be able to stay with her in the Methodist Women's University dorms, which forbade same-sex visitors after ten, so they'd have to spring for a motel room. People said long-distance relationships were hard, but they forgot to mention how _expensive_ they also were. There would be long-distance phone charges too.

Tami settled in against his side. His chest was still rising and falling slightly. They'd come a long way since the first time they'd fooled around in this bed. Eric had become a much more confident lover. He was as considerate as ever, but he was no longer timid about expressing his own desires. When he asked her for something, she almost always _wanted_ to do it, and on the rare occasions when she didn't, she felt no awkwardness in telling him no.

She turned her head and looked at the box on his desk, a box she knew held his compass and his Pop Warner trophies and his sister's last letter. He was moving on, and so was she. He'd be popular at Westfield High, she was sure. He'd come out of his shell this year, and he was no longer an awkward virgin. He would always be a bit reserved - that was just his personality - but he wasn't in a dark and angry place anymore. He was likeable. He'd probably be a star on the Warriors, and he was filling out, becoming even more attractive. Girls would be all over him next year.

She kissed his shoulder. She wanted to ask him to promise he wouldn't cheat, just for the verbal reassurance, but she didn't want to sound like she didn't trust him either. She knew he had an honorable heart, but she also knew that 500 miles was a long way, and that having a dozen girls chasing you every day was a lot of temptation.

"I love you," he said.

She smiled weakly. "I love you too. Promise…" She trailed off.

"What?"

"Nothing."

He slid down until he was face to face with her. "You behave yourself at MWU, you hear?"

She laughed. "You too. At Westfield. Those girls are going to be all over you."

"I don't want those girls. I want you."

[*]

Tami didn't want to stop kissing Eric, but they'd been leaning against her sedan for almost an hour now. She'd traded in her pick-up on this more efficient vehicle. Buddy Garrity had given her an excellent deal on the car, no doubt at the direction of Eric's father.

"I'm going to miss you," Eric said, his forehead pressed against hers, his breath uneven from all the making out. A moving truck sat in the driveway of the Taylor house a few feet from the curb where they stood. "Columbus day weekend, right?"

She nodded.

They kissed awhile longer until she finally insisted on prying free. He opened the door for her. "Write me love letters," she said through the window as he closed the door.

"I'm no good at that."

"Then learn," she insisted with a smile.

"I'll call every day," he said.

"Long distance is expensive."

"I don't care. I have a job." The engine whirred on. He leaned through the window. "I love you, Tami Hayes."

"I love you, too."

As she drove off to her future in college, she watched him through the rearview mirror, standing and waving. It hurt to leave him behind, but she was headed off to make a better life for herself, a better life than her own parents had made, a life that, one day, she wanted Eric Taylor to share.

**THE END**

**A/N:** I hope you enjoyed this back story. I would greatly appreciate any concluding comments. I do plan to post a sequel focusing on the college and early marriage years so I hope you're not bored of the general theme yet!


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